Linky Friday #94: New Jersey Edition
Government:
[G1] Political scientists and reporters rank states by corruption. New Jersey came out as the most corrupt, though Louisiana didn’t participate.
[G2] New Jersey wants to become the first state to regulate pet grooming.
[G3] Owen Courreges says that New Orleans looks to become the model city for anti-smoking extremism. I don’t know that this is worse than New York City, but it’s pretty bad.
[G4] Michael Carney thinks we long since ought to have replaced the SSN as our main identifier.
[G5] Does Obama’s amnesty give illegal immigrants more rights than legal immigrants?
Family:
[F1] Michael Brendan Dougherty throws cold water on those celebrating the recent news on divorce rates.
[F2] Contrary to the claims of many as well as intuitive sense, premarital cohabitation does not increase the odds of marital success. Scott Stanley asks why not?
[F3] True love waits! Or more precisely, early sex is a pathway to non-marital cohabitation, while waiting to have sex is a pathway to marriage (and better marriages, at that). Beware confounding factors, of course.
[F4] Where have all the good men gone? Maybe women shouldn’t insist on the “steady job” thing?
Money:
[M1] From Vikram Bath: What happens when you charge a Harvard Business School $4 too much for Chinese take-out
[M2] Retail fronts may be able to compete with ecommerce after all.
[M3] Legalized gambling has been a bane to lower-income Americans, but perhaps it can be used for good and not evil, to entice them to save.
[M4] Yes, yes, there’s no such thing as free shipping. The thing is, free shipping isn’t about getting something for nothing as it is about price transparency and reliability.
[M5] The Washington Post makes the case that it’s bad for poor minorities if you give them money.
Copyright:
[C1] The Pirate Bay is down, maybe for good. Good riddance, says a former contributor, because theys old out a long time ago.
[C2] Though they’re clearly doing so in their own self-interest, I’m quite glad that Netflix et al are trying to reverse the highly troublesome Innocence of Muslims verdict.
[C3] I don’t completely agree with the complaint here. If you want people to stop using your image for commercial purposes, you can do that. But failing to do that, it seems weird to say “We don’t mind people using our image for commercial purposes, as long as it’s not the people hosting our image.” This explanation helps a little, but not much. Still mulling it over.
[C4] GM and Ford are being sued over a new feature that allows you to rip CDs in your car.
[C5] The UK is legalizing parody works and media backups.
[C6] This story – about a game teaching pirates about the consequences of piracy – isn’t new, but still cracks me up.
[C7] Thanks to Creative Commons licensing, approaching one billion works are free to use online.
Law:
[L1] New Jersey is contemplating making lying for sex a form of sexual assault. So under this law, if a fifteen year old girl tells an eighteen year old guy that she’s legal, is she as guilty of rape as he is?
[L2] Speaking of such things, here’s an article about the gender double standard when it comes to statutory rape.
[L3] With budgets being tight and crime being low, it’s no surprise that states are re-evaluating expensive incarceration options. It is a bit of a surprise that Texas is one of the states leading the way. Perhaps they hate taxes even more than they hate criminals!
[L4] From Mad Rocket Scientist: You can’t play Russian Roulette with a Semi-Auto Handgun.
[L5] From Mad Rocket Scientist: Part of the problem is a compliant, and dare I say lazy, media who print police PR without any independent investigation or follow-up.
Technology:
[T1] Detroit is stuck in Windows XP.
[T2] New York wants to give everybody WiFi, though some better WiFi than others. Before the rise of 3G and 4G, the case for municipal WiFi was stronger than it is now.
[T3] AT&T wants to know how come their 6Mbps DSL isn’t good enough for the folks of Chanute, Kansas.
[T4] From Mad Rocket Scientist: Geek Squee! Holograms with haptic feedback (via ultrasound)! So cool!
[T1] From Mad Rocket Scientist: Somethings are best viewed with some time & distance. Especially when it’s a stellar collision! Very cool to watch, but I certainly would not want to be local to the event.
Education:
[E1] MIT has removed (free) lectures from its servers because classes taught by (alleged) creeps are no longer educational and informative, I guess.
[E2] From Mad Rocket Scientist: I think I have a different working definition of trauma than these kids do. I could understand if a student was a close friend or relative of the deceased, but for everyone else who has measure of separation from the involved parties, welcome to adulthood, compartmentalizing your emotions is part of what you have to learn how to do as a professional.
[E3] How sociologists made themselves irrelevant.
[E4] The title says it all: “Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List” is an actual science paper accepted by a journal.
[E5] Matthew Lynch argues that bilingual education should be mandatory.
[E6] When you look at admissions percentages, you’ll notice some interesting things. Some colleges that one might not consider particularly competitive nonetheless reject a lot of students. This isn’t that, but it came to mind when reading Amanda Graves’s complaint about being courted by colleges that have no intention of accepting them.
[E7] Does the college define its students, or do students define the college?
a history with reebok shoes or boots
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This appeared a few places recently, and I meant to send it on for LF and never did.
We talk a lot about segregation and Schelling, here’s a playable page that illustrates things nicely:
http://ncase.me/polygons/Report
E1: So weird. I just listened to Lewin’s first Physics I lecture this week. I decided that every year from now on, I am going to pick a different subject and casually study it, see where it takes me. I narrowed down 2015 to physics and biology/genetics and watched the Lewin lecture to help decide.
Don’t know the nature of the claims made against him, so can’t say if the action is appropriate. I do wonder what the reason for removing the lectures is, though. Seems a bit Stalinist. Would it have been somehow inappropriate or would it have facilitated future harassment to leave the videos up?Report
I recommend doing this very strongly. I’ve been talking one open course at a time for about 3 years, and it’s been awesome. I’ve learned about ancient Rome, medieval Germany, finance, Python, genetics, literature, and more, and enjoyed all of it.Report
Do you just listen to the lectures and do some outside reading or do you do all the course exercises and take the exams as well?
Pretty much decided on physics, but wasn’t sure on whether I wanted to focus on cosmology and astronomy or on certain topics in theoretical physics. Decided to just start with Physics I and let my curiosity guide me from there. Trying to figure out how much time to take on the fundamentals though. I want to be able to understand the more advanced material, but don’t need to be a practitioner in any way.Report
Depends. For the Python course, for example, I did everything, while for the Germany course, I just listened to the lectures and did some of the reading. It would be difficult to learn the basics of Python without participating, but I learned enough about medieval Germany without having to do too much.
Physics sounds like a good choice. You can learn a lot more about it taking a few open courses than you could just reading about it on your own. What are you going to go through? Coursera? A university directly?Report
I was using MIT’s Opencoursewear and started with Lewin’s Physics I lectures. But now those are gone…Report
I read the headline and said, “Please don’t let it be Lewin. There are so many professors at MIT, surely it’s not him.” His online lectures were great. My wife and I ran through the Electricity and Magnetism course a couple of years ago as a refresher and really enjoyed it.
I’m not sure I follow the reasoning. He’s retired, so he’s not exactly continuing to interact with students.
I showed this to my wife and she was bummed. Then she said something depressing: “Eh. In my experience, lots of professors do that sort of thing.” Sigh.Report
M1 — The jerk finally came to his sense and apologized.
C3 — This sounds to me exactly like the GPL. Which, as a commercial software developer, I find a pain in the butt, but it’s completely standard practice within the industry, and has been for decades.Report
C3 redux: is the photo sold without attribution? If someone republished one of my posts as by me, I’f be kind of flattered. If my name wasn’t on it, I’d be completely pissed off.Report
With attribution. Otherwise the photographer would have a legal way to prevent it.Report
Mike,
C3: LGPL, where one can reuse in commercial stuff, but it’s still theirs. And if CC doesn’t already have that, they need it. Because it’s one thing to sell “I posterized your crap” and it’s another to sell your crap, without paying you.Report
C3 – If you want a more sophisticated license, by all means write one that defines the uses you would permit.
If you want the ease and simplicity of well-defined licenses prepared for free by others, they won’t perfectly fit your desires. Whining about it is nonsense.
The solution is to put this stuff on non-commercial licenses with a note that you’ll evaulate commercial use permissions upon a case-by-case basis, including uncompensated use.Report
If I released something into the wild, I’d use Apache or something like it.Report
Here’s a lovely thought: If L1 passes, it will eventually used against a transgender person.Report
This comment induced me to do a little research which led me to a case history concerning Sean O’Neill, who was prosecuted as Sharon Clark, his pre-transition name. Apparently everyone was fine with Sean until they found out he was trans, and “pretending to be a boy to seduce girls”. It’s case 3 in the link below:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mfsfront;c=mfs;c=mfsfront;idno=ark5583.0016.003;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1;g=mfsg
Maybe you knew about this, I certainly didn’t.Report
I was not familiar with that case; however, there was a recent case in Scotland, which was complicated by the fact the man also lied about his age.Report
Will L1 include push-up bras? What about men wearing lifts in their shoes?Report
Women are the biggest liars! Look at you, all of you. All of you are liars! Masters of the lie- the visual lie. Look at you. You got on heels- you ain’t that tall. You got on makeup, your face don’t look like that. You got a weave- your hair ain’t that long. You got a Wonderbra on- your titties ain’t that big. Everything about YOU is a lie.Report
On L1, I remember that sort of law being used in an Arab who pretended to be a Jew in Israel. I thought that was crazy, but a couple women I knew said we should have something like that here. That was a few years ago.Report
The amount of Serious Shitstorm one could get into with that particular pretense… oh, jesus christ, that was suuuch a bad idea. (at least the kids would still be jewish… I think?)Report
T1: Government at all levels seems to have a lot of trouble with software procurement (so does the private sector, but they can cover things up). When I worked for the state legislature, I had the dubious privilege of discussing failed or nearly-failed software purchases with multiple departments. Part of the problem is that government agencies seem to be horribly bad at specifying what the purchased software is supposed to do. Part of it is that statutory restrictions on purchases, intended to stop fraud in things like purchasing paper clips or hiring snow removal services, erect arms-length separations that make communications about a complex system hard. Part of it is that the requirements change regularly and often through no fault of the purchasing agency.
With respect to the last one, I swear that there were times when the feds changed how a rule should be applied, or the means by which certain critical data was distributed to the states, just to be obnoxious.Report
There’s always LiMux!Report
I was thinking more about their DRMS system-from-hell. Doesn’t matter what your desktop OS is if the back-office software sucks.Report
There’s also the issue that government is All About Dat Process, and things specific to a software package are often written into the process. If the process for archiving government documents requires a procedure that can only be performed in Office 95, then you’ll be using Office 95 forever. If All Documents Produce By This Office Shall Be Readable By Any Government-Operated Machine, and there exists a potential machine that only has Office 95, then everyone has to use Office 95.Report
F2,
They’re partially wrong on this — a lot of people who move into cohabitation quickly may simply be “impulsive” — and impulsive people are more likely to get divorced. But, I don’t mean impulsive in general — I mean the basic idea that “opposites attract” — people who really aren’t compatible in the long term, getting swept off their feet by lust.Report
Selection is no doubt an issue, and the author says as much. I don’t think that’s all that’s going on, though. I think the sliding into marriage is an issue.Report
No, it’s worse than that. there’s the issue of using “cohabitation” to force committment. Aka: I love you so much, let’s get together! someone willfully deciding to force someone else’s level of committment higher than it actually is.Report
That’s pretty ubiquitous, though. Somebody usually ends up taking the lead in advocating things move to the next level…Report
Will,
it’s one thing to say “I think we’re ready for this.”
It’s another to cohabit because you’re jealous, or because you think the other person needs to demonstrate more committment.Report
G2- Maybe pro-regulators can just pass an overarching law that says that you need licensing and various costly onerous compliance requirements for any activity in which money exchanges hands? Nah they’d probably end up having to expand it to include cookies. Sorry Mrs. Smith, you have to fill out this W-214 form before I can accept those cookies for shoveling your walk.
M1- I’d think M1 could more accurately be summarized as “The war on drugs. How the fed’s fish over first nation in 2014.”
L1- Sex and lies go together like pigeons and bird crap. I can’t imagine what could go wrong with criminizing the intersection of sex and lies.Report
If it weren’t for sex and lies, humans would have already gone the way of the dodo!
(Note: I do not endorse lying for sex. But I imagine that Og probably told a lot of tall tales about that sabretooth tiger he supposedly battled to bring home the meat).
It also occurs to me that if people don’t want to see sex and romance treated like a commodity, perhaps we should avoid applying legal sanctions for, essentially, the sexual equivalent of monetary defrauding.
What would we call this sort of con-job? A Fonzi scheme?Report
One of the thoughts I had is that one of the few cases I would support legal sanction is “I will pay you for sex” followed by a refusal to do so. Or any strictly transactional sex, really.Report
Will,
that’s the thing, though. we criminalize the prostitute.
If this was a society where prostitution was more legal, this could be a decent, contract sort of thing. As it is now, you run into the “you thought you were getting money for sex? you bad man/woman!”
(note: the guy who goes into the bar to scam drinks off interested parties? is he in violation of this? After all, he’s not promising anything…)Report
@glyph
Is a Fonzi scheme a joke or did you mean to write Ponzi?Report
@will-truman Well, yeah. I agree with that. But in that case the victim is, again, being defrauded out of money.
By “any strictly transactional sex” do you ALSO mean that if you explicitly promised me sex if I dug a ditch for you, then you didn’t “pay up” after I did it, I could go after you legally?
If so – and obviously we can’t compel payment in the originally-agreed upon “currency” – how would we decide damages?
Would you be forced to pay me either the A.) local going rate for ditch-diggers (to compensate for my time lost digging that ditch) or B.) the local going rate for a sex-worker of comparable marketability to yourself (for me to replace the agreed-upon sex with you that I didn’t get)?Report
@saul-degraw Ayyyyy. That’s not cool man.Report
@burt-likko
Isn’t all fair in love and war?Report
The push to criminalize seduction, otherwise known as lying, seems to not be enforceable. I can’t imagine how the law is going to split between harmless exaggeration and lying.Report
Seduction and lying aren’t always the same though. I was seduced by this donut, who told me it would be delicious…and it was right!Report
@north
Indeed.
Although to be honest, Evil Tod would kind of like to be a fly on the wall of a NJ singles bar a year after this law passed. And the inevitable escalation of men and women arguing why the lies their sex tell aren’t really lies like the lies the other sex tells would have a kind of cool schadenfreude vibe to it.
“I wouldn’t have to pretend to have been a fighter pilot in my early 20s if you didn’t have the friend zone!”
“Oh, yeah? Well, if it weren’t for your patriarchy I wouldn’t have ever had to have claimed to have been a hand model when I was a teenager!”
I will give the Right their due here: Their puritanical fear of sexuality usually shows up in really mundane and often quaint ways. (Abstinence! Wait to have sex until your married! And even then mainly use it to have kids you can raise, but try not to enjoy it!)
The Left, though…
Man, when their puritanical fear of sex rears it’s head it’s always to propose some really weird shit like this.Report
The right is dogmatic, the left is imaginative; both for good and ill.Report
“Hi, I’m unemployed and live with my mother.”
“Really? Nice to meet you. I have a horrible sexually transmitted disease.”
“I’d be lying if I said I care right now. Did I tell you that I once burned all a woman’s clothing because she broke up with me.”
“Is that so? I am still emotionally attached to my ex from 3 years ago, and I have father issues.”
“I really just want to get you into bed, so none of this matters.”
“I’ll just be sleeping with you for validation of my self-image.”
“My Mom’s still up, do you want to go to your place?”
“My roomate will probably hear us and take pictures of you and post them on the web if you fall asleep.”
“Check please!”Report
Chris, that was LOL funny.
North and Tod, some elements of the left can take a good idea and twist into something unimaginably horrible by taking it to its logical conclusion. I can see where the anti-lying to get sex are coming from. If affirmative and informed consent is important than how can anybody be told a lie as part of a seduction plan give meaningful consent? Making it illegal to lie to get sex can be seen as being against sexual fraud. Its potentially a great ethical standard. Its just a really horrible legal one for the courts to enforce and would make prosecuting rape even more difficult.Report
F4-How much of this is from many women wanting to have their cake and eat it to? Play around and sow your wild oats with the bad boys when your young and than find a more mature man to settle down with for mortgage and family when they get older.
From the standpoint of the “good men”, what’s in it for us? Why should we enter into relationships with the types of women who spent years or decades rejecting us but now want something stable and mature. Why should we have to be the janitors that have clear up past mistakes?Report
Heh…Report
Not marrying a crazy bitch should be “something in it for you”. Trust me, that’s not a fun scene.Report
I have to say, it’s a bit shocking to see @leeesq express these feelings in quite this way. That being said, I half agree with this point of view. The half being that there are a lot of people who want to have their cake and eat it too, but men and women fall into that category with relatively the same frequency.
By way of an answer though, how about this? That attractive woman who wouldn’t pay attention to you at 22, because she was chasing something that wasn’t you, at 35 she’s probably still pretty attractive and now significantly more open to your whole nice guy shtick. So, it could be a win-win.
There are plenty of folks whose pasts have made them worse off mentally and emotionally, but there’s also plenty of folks whose pasts are just that, the past.Report
This is a topic that I’m capable of quite a lot of cynicism and mysogyny on for various reasons.
The way I see it is this, why should I be held to early 20th century standards for a relationship in the early 21st century? In these days of sexual freedom and kink, why should I have to fulfill all the traditional expectations to get anywhere? Its like getting the worst of pre and post-sexual revolution courtship. At least in the early 20th century, providing the traditional expectations got you certain things in return.Report
“This is a topic that I’m capable of quite a lot of cynicism and mysogyny on for various reasons.”
At least you can admit it!Report
Lee, I guess not dating women from the early 20th century wouldn’t be a helpful comment.
Each man and women gets to have their own standards and expectations; that is freedom. Finding the right lock for your key, so to speak, can be a pain. But it isn’t the worlds fault that it is hard to meet people you match with, that is just the world.Report
I will still offer Chris’s Guide to Dating, with real-world experience, for a small fee.
Here’s what you’ll get for your money:
We’ll go to bars or clubs of my choice, and we’ll talk to people — men, women — while we drink alcoholic beverages. We may also do this at other events where people are generally feeling sociable (say, concerts, festivals, the meetings of various clubs, groups, or associations, or Meet Ups). Gradually, it will emerge that the key to meeting people is talking to them. Occasionally when you talk to people, you make a connection. Occasionally when you make a connection, you get digits, and occasionally when you get digits, you get a date.
You’ll be buying my drinks, too, I should mention.
If you pay extra, I’ll bring R. and we’ll make friends with everyone in Austin.Report
Is it sad that I would have been interested in @chris business proposal and wish I had that when I was single?Report
Will,
not at all! I suspect it gets rather boring sitting alone in a bar, trying to catch people’s eye. At least with company, you can walk up to others who came with a friend. And if you let the instructor take the “more proactive” girl, then you can hang with the “I’m not sure if I’m a bar-type girl…” — that way your awkwardness, if present, would seem “normal” and not “weird.”Report
@leeesq
I am going to spare you all of the ideological shaming language and give about as straight ahead and practical answer that I can give you. No good deed goes unpunished. If you want to be nice to people, be nice to them. Just make sure that you are doing it because you want to and not with the expectation that you are going to get something out of it. This is especially true when it comes to dating and relationships.
If you think that being one of the “good men” isn’t getting you what you want, start being something else. In all likelihood, though, you’re going to find that just turning yourself into a “bad boy” is not going to magically have women fawning over you. Attraction is complicated. And neither the old rules or the new rules are all that simple. You want to get better at something? Do it. Practice it. Complaining about it won’t get you anywhere.Report
@chris
You and I should go into business together. I am the ultimate wingman. On more than one occasion, I did everything but actually insert my friend’s P into the woman’s V. But I don’t discriminate! I’ve helped many a female meet and/or secure their man-of-choice.
Ultimately, my advice is somewhat similar to @j-r ‘s in that I say: Be yourself. Being someone else — the type of person you think your target of desire might be interested — is not viable in the long-term. Eventually they will realize you are not actually that person. Or you will become miserable trying to be someone you are not. Identify you are, what you have to offer, and what it is you are looking for. Then find someone who is looking for what you have to offer and who is offering what you are looking for. I’ve always been most successful with women when I was just being me. Some hated it and good riddance to them — we never would have worked out. The ones who liked it… well, that is how a relationship happens.Report
Jr, I prefer the adjective sweet over nice. The latter does not have good implicaitons these days. I’m not so dumb as to not realize that simply because you are nice doesn’t mean your entitled to something.
I actually do date a lot in real life. Getting first dates is something that I’m actually rather good at it. I’ve been on all sorts of first dates. Expensive ones, cheap ones, short ones, long ones, coffee dates, and activity dates. Its just that there seems to be something about me that doesn’t click because getting a second date never happens. I’ve received practically every sort of rejection possible. The reply is usually that she doesn’t think we’d make a good couple or that she didn’t feel a spark or something like that. In one memorial occassion I got this reply before I could even ask for a second date, a text the day afterwards simply saying that she had a lovely time but doesn’t think we would be a good couple together. I’m really fascinated on the ability of women to determine this after thirty minutes to an hour.Report
Chirs, you think I don’t do this? You think I just sit at home all the time when I’m not at work moaning about my life? I actually have a very good social life an go out dancing at least three or four times a month and I’m not bad at talking to people of all sorts. Its kind of a requirement for people with my job. Your probably not going to believe this but a lot of people in the real world do find me to be a likeable and funny fellow. As a romantic partner, not so much though,Report
@will-truman , not sad at all, and if you were single and happened to be in Austin, I’d probably provide the service for free (well, I might have you buy the first round).
@kazzy , dude, we will be rich. And seriously, R. will be the ringer. We could actually have this conversation with any potential client: “How many men/women do you want to meet tonight? No number is too high.” I have been to events with her at which we’ve met everyone, and I mean everyone, present. Dozens of people.
Typical conversation I have when we go out on the town:
Beautiful woman: [Walks up to Chris.] Hey, where is your girlfriend? I love her!
Me: Over there, talking to those people about their clothes.
Beautiful woman: [Walks over to R. Laughs. Walks back to Chris.] She told me to dance with you until she’s done over there.
Me: I love her too!Report
@leeesq
What do you think you offer as a romantic partner? Why should a woman want a second date with you? Why should she feel a spark?
Note: This isn’t meant to imply skepticism in any way. Rather, I think it a helpful exercise given what you’ve described about your experiences.Report
Lee, why do you think that is? Do you really think it’s because you’re a nice guy? Or do you think there’s something else going on? And I don’t mean to suggest that you’re just not relationship material or anything like that.Report
@chris
Millionaires!
Zazzy took me to a wedding on the west coast once. She was high school friends with the bride but they had lost touch and weren’t all that close anymore and she didn’t really know anyone else at the wedding. She was afraid it’d be awkward. Smash-cut forward two hours and I’m ripping shots with the bridal party and dancing with the groom. People started assuming we were there because of my connection with the groom rather than Zazzy’s connection with the bride. I routinely go to bars alone and end up with best friends — male or female — before it is all said and done. Or, rather, I should say that I used to routinely do this and now only very occasionally do so. Ahhh, parenthood. Still, I’m too social an animal to not make those connections. Even as a child, I’d routinely come home from school or camp or the park and say, “Mom, I have a new best friend!” “What’s his name?” “I don’t know!”
Zazzy is differently wired which is fine but she wouldn’t be much use to our operation.Report
Lee gets into cynical and depressive moods (like everyone else) and needs to lash out a bit every now and then (like everyone else).
He also just posted a picture of our niece to facebook so he might be feeling better.Report
@leeesq, I think that there is a pretty big logical flaw in your thinking. You may indeed be a sweet guy. You may indeed be having trouble with women. And those two things may indeed be related, however, it is a mistake to think that the former is directly responsible for the latter. You could frost your tips, start wearing Ed Hardy and grow a bad goatee and turn yourself into a heal straight out some horrific combination of the WWE and a Guy Fieri restaurant and you would not just magically become more attracted to women.
I am broadly in agreement with @kazzy and @chris, with the one caveat that I think “just be yourself” is about the worse advice you can give to someone having trouble with their preferred sex. It may be second only to “just be someone else.” The ability to build attraction is a skill just like any other skill. Some people have it naturally, in spades and some people are woefully deficient.
My advice to Lee is to consciously work on upping his game.Report
Chris, since I’m not a mind-reader I don’t know why this is. It could be different reasons for every woman who rejected me or it could be the same reason. Some of the reasons could be deep and others superficial. Most of the women I’ve dated did seem to have something of a good time, although a few were also bored, and seemed to have liked me. I had one start gushing out how sweet I was on the date but rejected me when I asked for a second date. I just really don’t know.Report
At your age, if you’re dating regularly (like, a lot) and never getting beyond a date or three, then there’s definitely something going on, and it’s not a collective problem with womankind. I would suspect that it’s your choices, not necessarily anything about your personality, and possibly where you are meeting the women (online? in person?), but it’s difficult to say. I’d want to review the tape, so to speak.Report
There is (or was) a Pittsburgh-based web-series called Something To Be Desired which showcased a service called Wingman Inc or something like that, which was along the lines of what is being discussed here. I remember when I watched it, thinking “Man, I would totally hire them.”
Which, arguably, could be put me in violation of potential New Jersey law…Report
I don’t see the service I’m suggesting as a Wingman service (though Kazzy and R. might fill that role). Mostly I would just want to show people that you can talk to just about anyone anywhere social, and they’ll talk back, because people are people and they don’t go to social places to not be social. I’d think of it more of a learning how to talk to strange people, learning the different directions that conversations take (like I said, sometimes you never speak to someone again, sometimes you get digits, sometimes you get a date), and for people with true social anxiety, as a sort of exposure therapy.Report
Chris, I agree that it’s different. Yours would be legal under proposed NJ law!. I was just reminded of it.Report
@j-r
I suppose I say “Be yourself” provided someone has a strong sense of self and has engaged in extended self-reflection. Be genuine, be sincere… cultivate attractiveness not by putting on a mask but by recognizing your strengths, developing them, and figuring out how to best display them.Report
Chris, most of my dates come from online. I’ve also used dating services in the past. They tend to be upper-middle class professionals like me or in the arts, mainly dancers. Some were very attractive and others were not. Nearly all are in their early to mid-thirties. I’ve made attempts to date women I’ve known in real life but those attempts worked less well than my on-line attempts.
jr, I hate game. I’ve seen people with game and the entire idea of me pulling it off well and not selling my soul in the process is ludicrous.Report
Lee,
Pardon, but it sounds an awful lot like you’re finding people on the “I want to date” list. I do totally know multiple people who would join such a list (online or otherwise) simply to go on first dates, and really have no intention of going farther.
An alternative method to finding dates is to actively seek out the people who don’t have dating on their mind. Say, the people winding up at a library on their day off… (or board gaming, or half a dozen other things).Report
@Kazzy
I think we are largely in agreement, with the exception that I really believe that attraction is a skill not unlike any other skill. Self-reflection isn’t going to give you a better golf swing. Or for a better analogy, think of salesmanship. Some people are natural born salesman and some couldn’t sell Thunderbird to a wino. If someone was in danger of losing his or her job, because of a lack of selling skills, self-reflection would only do so much. At some point that person is either going to have purposefully study salesmanship or get into a different line of work.
@leeesq
That’s probably because you are confusing game with PUA. I’m not telling you to go buy a fuzzy hat and start negging women. The term game has existed well before PUA and applies to a general competency in various endeavors. If you had game, you’d know that.Report
Kimmi, isn’t that what creeps do? Pester women for dates at libraries or at their work when they really just want to be left alone to do what their job or whatever else is at hand. At least I know that women don’t perceive me as a creep regardless of however else they see me.Report
Lee,
it’s a bad idea to pressure someone for a date, anyplace or anytime.
It’s a worse idea to pressure someone for a date if they’re in sales or something else where they Have To Be Nice to you.
Nonetheless, there are tons of people at the library. And striking up a conversation about the book they’re looking for, or talking about the latest horrible book you read… It’s a bit of personal interaction, and people are social people (even if they are at the library). Ya might want to be a little more careful for “I’d like to go about my business please” — certainly more than you would at a bar.
But, as always, part of the point is — simply to work at clicking with people. Having a 20 minute conversation about their favorite Companion isn’t harassing someone for a date, fer crying out loud.
Creeps go up to people and ask them for dates. Normal people have conversations that sometimes turn into “let’s go grab a coffee…” (and maybe you exchange e-mail addresses) — or get invited out to a movie.
I tend to think this is normal, semi-flirtatious behavior. Plenty of chances for both sides to say “nah” (about ten before the subject of a “real date” actually comes up).
Is it more work than just going out on a date with someone who has “a date on Friday” penciled into their calendar? Suuure…
OTOH, you can have five different hooks in the sea…Report
jr, I know that there is a difference between game and PUA. Game can be described as skill in the art of flirtation and seduction or something like that. It involves personality traits that are the complete opposite of mine; which tends towards the cerebral and sedate.Report
@j-r
But self-reflection is what allows the person to understand what skills they have and what they need to cultivate. Self-reflection is not the end, it is a means to the end.
“Attraction” itself isn’t really a thing. Rather, there are various qualities which might be considered attractive. Recognizing what one’s attractive qualities are and how they can highlight them AND THEN searching for someone attracted to those things seems to be the best approach.Report
Lee,
I know a guy who pretty consistently gets… things (drinks, dates, etc) by engaging girls’ mothering instincts. It’s like puppy dog eyes — cute and innocent and oh, so sweet.
I’m also sure that a big part of “game” isn’t necessarily about seduction, or flirtation, but simply about projecting “I want YOU.” — not just any girl, that the guy isnt’ about to ogle someone across the room — that his entire focus is on his date.Report
Wow. This conversation is familiar.
@leeesq — You can be cerebral as fuck and use game. In fact, you can be a nerdy middle-aged transsexual and use game. It is not about being fake or whatever. Instead, it is about how to shift conversational frames in an amusing way, plus how to signal your interest, how to read her signals, when to touch (or NOT touch), and so on.
And really you should ditch the bullshit Redpill social theory. Maybe it helps you feel better, but it’s toxic.
@everyone-else — Lee is having problems getting second dates, so all your cool “how to meet” advice is pretty useless, since all of that is build for people having first-date problems.Report
Oh, and on hitting on women in libraries and stuff, you can do it — if she is receptive, which can be determined by observing her body language. Basically, you try to catch her eyes — if she won’t meet your eye you’re done — and smile. If she smiles back and “opens” to you (which is a subtle body language thing) you are good to approach. She probably won’t, cuz most women are not sitting around waiting for some dude (you!) to hit on her.
But maybe she is. Learn the signs.
I’ve men and women meet and flirt on the subway, where it was clear both were receptive. I have also observed shitty bro-dudes pestering an obviously uninterested woman, where she smiles and plays along (cuz women do that) but really can’t wait to get away from the dude. The difference between the two is pretty obvious.Report
That attractive woman who wouldn’t pay attention to you at 22, because she was chasing something that wasn’t you, at 35 she’s probably still pretty attractive
ROFL.
Good one.Report
For what it’s worth, I now realize that, in my teens, I was chasing after girls that weren’t interested in me while I was being oblivious to the fact that I was being flirted with by other girls and, had I not been an idiot, I could have had any number of dates when I was sitting at home moping.
That said: I had a lot of issues and I’m pretty sure that I preferred the chase to the actual terrifying possibility of meaningful interaction.
It wasn’t them, it was me. Of course, maybe your situation is significantly different from mine.Report
@leeesq
@kimmi : It’s a worse idea to pressure someone for a date if they’re in sales or something else where they Have To Be Nice to you
I disagree wtih Kimmi’s statement. After all, if you have a captive audience, you might as well take advantage of it. And if she thinks you are a creep, it doesn’t really matter.Report
Reading the comments, I am so glad that I got to give up dating 35+ years ago :^)Report
@leeesq
Why do you assume they rejected you because they wanted to “sow [their] wild oats with the bad boys”?
This complaint seems like the cousin of the “friend zone” diatribe.Report
Perhaps he has evidence of some sort of mental or physical issue that might cause the woman to have more fun with the “bad boys” than him?
I doubt it though.Report
If they can’t see what a winner you are, obviously they have bad taste.
It’s the sour grapes of dating.
Stock human psychology. You can’t get what you wanted, so you rationalize that (1) it wasn’t as good as it looked or (2) had some massive flaw or (3) there’s some fault in the world that prevented it. Really, really common mental quirk.
Back in my dating days, I just comforted myself with the realization that in a room full of women — I might find one or two interesting. Not that the others had some giant flaws, they just didn’t click with. Chemistry or whatnot. So any given woman is likely to feel the same way, finding one or two guys interesting. Why should I take it personally if we’re not mutually interested?Report
Free Range Oats have to be Free Range Oats….. you can’t tame them unless you are real artisnally bad boy.Report
@morat20
I’ve read a lot of articles that suggest that on-line dating makes everyone (or almost everyone) miserable because it makes the options too open and people begin thinking stuff like “this guy or gal was a B or a B plus but why should I say yes to a second date when I get just go back on-line and find an A or an A plus.”
I don’t know how true this is or not but it seems to be a very common sentiment and based on your comment I guess it existed before on-line dating. Though I’ve also had plenty of people tell me that they really like that they found their mates before on-line dating was a thing. A lot of people seem to have a dread of on-line dating.Report
Saul,
1) It’s probably hard to get a good lusty relationship going online. (smell doesn’t carry over ethernet).
2) You’re getting a definite element of self-selection. The less picky find a date/partner earlier, so the pickier people keep on bumbling around, trying to find “the Best” that they can handle. And for the truly “unattached” there’s always Ashley Madison…Report
@morat20
But that tendency can be overridden. Best to focus on what you can control than what you can’t.Report
Oh sure, people control it all the time.
Heck, it happens with experience alone — well, for most people. “Eh, she’s just not into me” is the reaction of experience, versus “Stupid XXXX must like jerks”, which is often the voice of the inexperienced.
Of course, dating is the process of opening yourself up to painful rejection, so getting from Point A (inexperience) to Point B (experience) is generally a serious of kicks to the nuts for everyone involved, which is why junior high and high school suck so terribly, terribly much.
I think your basic levels of empathy and the ability to view yourself objectively help the process along — I’ve note the more narcissistic a person is, the more deeply personally they’ll take even the slightest hint of rejection and the more they’ll project the strangest reasons onto it.Report
@morat20
Why should I take it personally if we’re not mutually interested?
Because it is personal.Report
Out of curiosity, if there was a woman on here who was in her 30’s talking about how she can’t get a date despite being fairly well-employed, fairly good-looking, and fairly pleasant, I do wonder whether the advice she’d be getting would mirror the advice we’re giving now.Report
Scarlet,
Is it? I’ve met thousands of women over my life, of which hundreds had to be in the right zone for dating (right age, not related, what-have-you) and only a small handful of those hundreds did I have any interest in dating.
I never asked them out, never flirted, spoke and met with purely non-sexual manner. There wasn’t anything wrong with the vast majority of them, I simply had no interest in dating them. It wasn’t personal to ME — they just, for one reason or another, weren’t my type.
So why should I feel it’s personal when a woman, who has done exactly as I have (me hundreds of men the right age and circumstance for dating) has no interest in me? Why should I feel insulted or upset that she’s not into me? (Sure, unrequited interest sucks — but I’m not gonna take it as a personal insult unless it’s explicitly made personal).
Sounds like a double standard, really. Getting upset when the action is directed at me, but viewing it dispassionately when I do it.Report
@jaybird — Actually, do any of us know what @leeesq looks like? I mean, beside @saul-degraw ?
But we can actually run your experiment. Pretend I’m not me. Instead, say I’m an okay looking cis woman in her mid-thirties. I have a professional job, no kids, nor an ex husband. I dated some in my twenties, but chose the career-focus route. Now I’m getting lonely.
Kids? Maybe I want them, maybe not. Open to discussion.
Set aside the clichés like “biological clock” and shit. And set aside the dumb Redpill stuff. I didn’t fuck “bad boys.” I mostly just worked hard.
I want a decent guy. I want him to be “like me” to a sufficient degree, professional, educated, in his thirties or forties. Income matters, but not out of some “he has to buy me stuff” sense. Instead, it’s more that I want him to fit comfortably into my current lifestyle. I want him to be at least decent looking. It’s not the most important thing, but I get to dream just as men get to dream. Looks matter.
Okay, so I try out a few sites. OkC gets a lot of hits, but from a lot of really terrible dudes, literally stuff like this: http://straightwhiteboystexting.tumblr.com/
Blah! When you open with request for anal sex, I won’t date you.
I try that EHarmony thing, and they link me up with some men. I go on some dates. Some men I don’t like. A number are just wrong for me. A few I actually have some chemistry with, but when I won’t sleep with them right away, they shy away. It becomes clear they are just a more subtle version of the OkC bro. A few are really right. I like them, a lot, my heart begins to yearn, but from them I get no callback.
What should I do?Report
Lower your standards.Report
@scarletnumbers and @morat20 — A classic case of male entitlement is when some dude on the subway wants a woman’s attention, but she’s reading a book or thinking of math or something. (Often on the subway I’m staring into space thinking of math.) Anyway, the dude wants her attention. The fact she’s ignoring him does not matter. The fact she has on headphones does not matter. He interrupts.
And when she has zero interest in interacting with him, cuz she’s got her own shit and he ain’t it, and when she kinda brushes him off, nicely cuz she doesn’t want a scene, he freaks out anyhow like a spoiled brat. Calls her a “cunt” or whatever.
Cuz for him it’s “personal.” For her he’s another no-class brodude she has to get past to get on with her day.
Sure, you can take it personally if you want. Whatevs. She’ll laugh at you when you ain’t around.
By the way, I’ve seen people hook up on the subway. When people have game, they signal each other and things go smooth. He gives her a look. She gives him a look. Things procede. People with game don’t need to act like selfish jerks.Report
@jaybird — Right. Or else get a nice Hitachi and a couple cats.Report
“Actually, do any of us know what@LeeEsqlooks like? I mean, beside@Saul Degraw?”
FWIW, I do.
Not my personal cup of tea, mind, but absolutely good looking.Report
@jaybird — But seriously! On the “lower standards” thing, if we assume this woman is following the heterosexual lifeplan, which includes the goal of marriage, then perhaps she should not lower her standards. By which I mean, some compromises make sense. If she just won’t even consider short guys, for example, then yeah, that’s her damage. On the other hand, she’s looking for a shared lifetime. She wants a man who will contribute. Financial stuff matters. Which, maybe she’s okay with “house husband” guy, but few men want that role. In practice, many younger women date “musician guy” for a while, but they soon grow tired of the endlessly messy apartment and his sorry ass playing video games all day.
We all know that guy! Don’t pretend he isn’t as common as rats.
She ain’t looking for a forty year old version of a teenage son.
So she may need to rethink elements of her “standards,” start broadening her viewpoint. Maybe “house husband” guy is there but she overlooked him.
But what if she does that and still can’t find someone decent? Hitachi and two cats?Report
@tod-kelly — Ah 🙂
(Right now I’m trying to think of a terribly awkward gay joke but I’m coming up short.)Report
A kabillion years ago, I wrote a little article called “On Dodging Bullets”.
If’n you’re interested, you can read it here:
https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2011/10/15/on-dodging-bullet
If you’re not interested yet you still made it this far, I’ll hope that your day picks up and then say that the problem with online dating is that it’s likely to work in the short term because the thing those people most likely have in common is that they’re both looking for someone.
Once they’ve met each other, they no longer have that in common. They’ll have to find something else that they’ll have in common. If they can’t do that, they’re likely to find themselves back at the dating site.Report
We are all looking for someone with high cheekbones and who works out who has spectacularly awesome secondary sexual characteristics who looks really good in tertiary sexual characteristics who is fun in bed, works hard and makes good money, is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent, and owns a vineyard. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting that.
But we can’t all have high cheekbones. Sometimes it’s good to realize that someone out there will make you content despite what you think you want in a partner.
Some compromises make sense. Indeed. If the main traits you’re looking for involve something involving how they look, you’re going to be disappointed because, in 10 years, they’re going to weigh a little more, they’re going to be a little less taut, and their nose and ears will be bigger.
If the main thing you’re looking for is employability, you’re probably going to do a little bit better, so long as you are a good judge of what will be employable in 10 years. “He’s the best Fortran programmer in the department!” isn’t as bankable as “He can code poorly in any language a mere two weeks after picking up a couple of books!”
Marriage isn’t swinging from the chandeliers all the time. It’s mostly like running a small non-profit. Most of the folks that I know who were single for, by their lights, far too long were people who were looking for someone with whom to swing from the chandeliers rather than someone with whom to run a small non-profit.Report
I hear the concern as being perceived as ‘the good guy,’ the one you turn to after sowing wild oats; and not the guy you date to sow those oats and get their kink out; and the problem is the second/third follow-up dates.
Am I missing something?Report
While he’s a pretty broad-minded person overall, Tod is simply not attracted to Jewish men.Report
@veronica-d, for what its worth, I’m five foot five inches tall with dark but rapidly greying hair and a short, well-trimmed pepper and salt beard. My body is stocky, muscular, and very hairy. My skin is oily but I wash my face at least three times a day to keep everything under control.
I am not asking for sex or even any physical contact. Just a bloody second date rather than a rejection on spurious grounds after the first.Report
@zic, you are correct. My concern is being perceived as “good guy” you turn to after women sowed their wild oats and decide its time to have a serious relationship without any concern about whether I’d like to sow my wild oats. Some people might relish in being the “good guy” but I want my fun girlfriend and just a little of what I missed out on. I do not want a woman who is going through the motions of being a girlfriend to get to the type of relationship she wants.
The pragmatic problem is that I’m very good at getting first dates but can’t seem to progress beyond that point. The usually response in reply is something like she doesn’t think we would make a good couple together.Report
@mike-schilling It’s not a Jewish thing, I swear. It’s really just men of the Judeo-Christian persuasion who don’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior.Report
I think I get what Jaybird was getting at up above.
I think it is an interesting quirk of this era that when we talk about why a single man can’t get a date/girlfriend/fwb, the collective conversation tends to go toward, “What is wrong with that guy?” Whenever I see the question of why a single gal can’t get the same, the conversation almost alway veers toward “What is wrong with society?”
With the latter, sometimes it’s about Women In Society (“this is what you get for wanting a career!”) and sometimes its about Men In Society (“where have all the good men gone?”), but it never seems to be answered with “it’s just you and you’re clearly flawed so why don’t you go fix yourself” the way it’s going here with Lee.Report
@tod-kelly
“there person savior?”Report
Bloody Siri.
Fixed.Report
@tod-kelly, I think this is because in terms of heterosexual relationships, men were and still are expecting to be the person that does the courting. Its the men who generally are supposed to approach and ask a woman out or for sex if thats what they are going for. At least in the courtship or setting up a one-night stand phase of the relationship, women are traditionally the reactive ones rather than the pursuers. Its changing a little these days but not that much.
Since men are supposed to be the pursuers in heterosexual relationships, the assumption is that if they can’t get a date, girlfriend, wife, or one-night stand than something about them must not be up to muster rather than society at large because men pursue and women react.
If women aren’t reacting positively than something must be wrong with him. Since women are the reactive party in early stages of the relationship than the assumption is something is wrong with society when men chose not to pursue them.
Another reason why people say “whats wrong with this guy” for men who can’t get into relationships is that it allows them to ignore some of the negative parts of the current dating system.Report
My original response was not “lower your standards” but “do you have Resting Bitch Face?” but then I figured that I couldn’t get away with that.Report
Another reason why these sorts of conversations go the way they do is because one of the issue with rape culture is that many men do feel that they are entitled to a girlfriend and sex. Bad things happen because of this. By assuming that a heterosexual man with dating problems is entirely at fault for his situation than you get to avoid any messy issues regarding entitlement. With women, the entitlement issues also exist but the outcome tends to be less bad for society as a whole than with men. Thats why you can refrain things about a woman having problems with dating as a societal issue.Report
@leeesq
*That* I suspect that has more to do with you than culture. It wasn’t that was when I was single, and that was 20 years ago. My understanding is that it has only become more liberal since.
Here is a conversation I have had with a lot of dudes over the years:
Guy I Happen to Know: “Men always are the ones that have to make the moves! It would be nice if it wasn’t always me, and if a woman kew what it was like to be rejected.”
Me: “Dude, what are you talking about? What about that women that was just here putting moves on you that you shrugged off?”
Guy I Happen to Know: “Oh, I get really uncomfortable when women do that. I’m looking for someone less slutty.”Report
My experience is somewhere in between how Lee describes things and how Tod is. The impetus is more likely to be on the guy, but not universally so.Report
the current dating system.
{{{Good grief…}}}
1. It seems to work fine for all the folks who, you know, get second dates…
2. Take a minute and reflect on how you self-described upthread: short, hairy and oily. I didn’t see a single positive attribute mentioned (other than that you wash 3 times a day, and I’m on the fence on that one, to be honest). Is that *really* how you see yourself? Could that be part of the problem? I mean, I’m not as bigoted as some folks on this thread (I don’t discriminate based on the Jesus as personal savior stuff), but I wouldn’t date you either. Not based on *that* description.Report
” I mean, I’m not as bigoted as some folks on this thread (I don’t discriminate based on the Jesus as personal savior stuff)”
Awesome. That may be peak Stillwater.Report
And your response may be Peak Tod. We’re two dudes with wives talking about dating a Jewish man, Tod. I’ll let you connect all the other dots.
Well, on second thought, since you seem incapable of doing that wrt comments I make, I’ll just say it bluntly. It was a joke.Report
My guess would be there’s some lack of authenticity. You want women who want to date a bad boy. Are you a bad boy? If yes, than forgive me. If no, than what are you?
Which brings me to the real point. I don’t think you want a woman who wants to date a bad boy, I think you want a bad girl who doesn’t mind dating a good boy.
And if you’re so oily that you’re having to wash 3 times a day, what you’re washing with is probably a problem; oil production is often a response to irritation. I’d try some gentler products, use them less often, and not be afraid to smell like myself. Your smell, not body-grooming product smells, is what will or will not be attractive; if someone can’t smell you, they can’t decide if they’re attracted to you, and so will probably think they’re not.
Other than these things, the only other thing I can suggest is be bad. Say you’ll call tomorrow, but call two or three days later. Set up a date, and cancel it at the last minute. Be unavailable. Make her work for it; bad boys are not waiting around for a second date, they’re prowling for another date.
And god help you when she discovers that you’re a marshmallow.Report
There is a definite tendency in some circles (but by no means all) to respond to lonely men like a Republican and lonely women like a Democrat.Report
@stillwater, and the current economic system is working out great for people making a lot or money. The people struggling to get by or living under crushing poverty, thats their own damn fault.
I also think that being short is a positive point. I also said that I’m muscular.Report
the current economic system is working out great for people making a lot or money.
Maybe gummint could set you up with a dating EBT card: you swipe it at the door of a club and get to hang out with a government funded hotty.Report
Check your privilege, zic.Report
If people could relieve hunger by rubbing their stomachs, we’d hold people who asked for EBT in contempt.Report
I did, @james-hanley I checked carefully, and found I was a bad girl who had the privilege of corrupting at least two (possibly more) good boys; which is what Lee says he’s looking for; not marriage material, not a long term commitment; a wild and crazy time before he settles down.
So I have the privilege of suggesting that wild girls look for specific things in their fun; and the scent of a man is one. It’s a privilege, I agree. And one I take very seriously. Corrupting a good boy’s a lot of responsibility; karmic debt and all that.Report
Beautiful, zic. I can’t wait for the next time a guy boasts about his privilege here, about how he taught a couple of goody two-shoes girls that what they really wanted to do was drop their panties and get naughty with him, and you nod and smile approvingly at how good he was for them.Report
First, I’m the only person who actually listened to what Lee said he wanted.
Second, if that’s what those good girls want, I’ve got no problem with that at all. I am not a prude, I believe in every persons right to get as kinky as they want; it’s his or her choice; so long as they also have a willing partner. I think I’ve also been pretty vocal about the fact that prudish purity standards are part of whole sexual violence problems we face; I’d guess they’re particularly pertinent with that percentage of false accusations that happen and are attributed to ‘she felt bad about it the next day.’
Third, my comment was referring back to a post Will made the other day; and the importance of recognizing that attraction is a chemical thing as much as anything. It’s not just dating profiles, calendars, or pleasant conversation over dinner and a bottle of wine; the biochemistry between two people actually matters a lot.
But I freely admit that getting lectured by you is a bonus! Thank you.Report
Zic, I prefer to see myself as a gentleman and a scholar.
Your advise seems to be a bit problematic. It’s essential do everything for yourself. Women don’t get dating advise like that.Report
First, I’m the only person who actually listened to what Lee said he wanted.
The only one, eh? No, no, that’s not arrogant at all.
Second, if that’s what those good girls want, I’ve got no problem with that at all.
Funny, I was talking about the boasting guy, and when I looked up somebody had moved the goalposts.
But I freely admit that getting lectured by you is a bonus! Thank you.
Oh, am I copying your gig? Sorry about that. Please, continue on with diagnosing a guy you’ve never met, and giving him life advice despite not really knowing jack about him, based on a science lesson you learned from a non-scientist on a non-science blog. You do it so well.Report
I can’t believe this thread is still going on!Report
Me either.
I’m just popping in quick to apologize to Still. Totally did not get that you were joking. My bad.Report
@leeesq I’ll go back to what I first said; you’ve got an authenticity problem. You want to sow your wild oats, to be someone’s wild, get-the-kinky-out boyfriend before settling down. You’ve said that here, and it’s not the first time. You also see yourself as a scholar and a gentleman. It seems to me (and I might be wrong) that you’re having trouble reconciling those two things.
In part, I wanted you to think about how you see yourself vs. what you fantasize for yourself. I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong about wanting to be wild for a bit; and I’ve heard plenty of women tell give other women that same advice. (It’s probably something women are more reluctant to say around men, reputation’s still a big thing to protect.)
I also don’t think being wild is about sex so much as about being spontaneous and silly; daring to be a little foolish in public, daring to do silly things to make someone else smile.Report
I’ll agree with Zic and give similar advice. Dude, we’ve all heard “be yourself” a kabillion times until we’re sick of it. The situation is that if you are sitting there thinking “I hope that she likes me” and “I must watch every thing I do and say lest I make a mistake”, you’re *NOT* being yourself. You’re being a weird and lame simulacrum of yourself.
“Well, this is something that I want very badly! How do I not sit and think that I hope that I am liked and watch everything I say and do?”
I have no idea. How it happened with me is that I gave up and stopped caring and started treating the women around me, even the ones I was attracted to, the same way I treated the guys around me up to and including the teasing, the indifference to topics I was indifferent to, and not holding back when we hit a topic I cared about.
At the restaurant, there was even a situation where I got into it with one of the busgirls where I corrected poor grammar on her part and (I didn’t know this) she was the daughter of a college prof and, as such, such things as being seen as someone whose English required correction really bugged her. She told me that I drew her to tears. Here’s the exchange: She had just finished using a carpet sweeper in the dining area and I asked her to sweep up the front foyer. She asked, as one did in the 90’s, “with, like, a broom?” and my response. “Yes… with ‘like’ a broom.” I had *ZERO* recollection of saying that to her. (But, yeah. I can totally see myself saying something like that.) Ready for the punchline? She and I were dating about a month after I that exchange. When I realized that I really, really liked her, I started acting like someone else entirely and, you know what? She didn’t like that person as much.
It was somewhere around there that I realized what “be yourself” means.
Dude. Be yourself. Once you’re comfortable around her, you’re going to be yourself anyway. Get it out in front. You’ll both benefit.Report
Here’s another way to look at it:
Either A) You need to change or B) The world needs to change.
If it’s B), then that’s something that, I imagine, is fairly comforting. The problem isn’t with you, it’s with everybody else, the culture, gender roles, and so on.
With that said, the world ain’t gonna freakin’ change. Like, ever. The only thing that you have the option of changing is You. Even if the world is wrong and you are right, the world is a brick wall much harder than your soft, soft head. So you have to figure out what you want.
Do you get more comfort from complaining? (Hey, there is much solace to be found in complaining!) Then you should go for it and know that the world is wrong and you are right and you can stand on principle.
Do you want to meet someone nice and do stuff like watch your shows together on a Saturday night after making some nice mac and cheese, maybe having a little ice cream after? Then you need to change.
Or, I suppose, hope that, next time, whatever it is that you’re doing will work.
And it’s pretty much that simple.Report
@zic, in the end all I’m asking for is a second date. Thats it. Just another encounter. That isn’t much but its being treated as a proposal of marriage or something else wildly inappropriate after the first date. There are people who end up willingly in bed together at the end of the first date. I’m not asking for that or even physical contact. Just a second date.
I am following the advise of people I know in the real world and on-line and none of it seems to work. You twist, turn, bend, and compromise but everybody else has their A to ZZZ list and they require everything to be satisfied for you to be under consideration. Its a second date, not a request for a life-long commitment or even a third date but only a second date.Report
@leeesq
I have to agree with what Jaybird said a few lines above.
Just stop giving a s*it. Look, I’m in a similar situation. Most of the women in my area are way more lefty than I am and many put conditions of political orientation in their “must haves”, so I’d gotten into the habit of not discussing that topic. And especially around women I REALLY like, I’d be all very accommodating, agreeable, and such. The women I wasn’t that interested in, after the first meeting, I’d be myself. Them, I can’t shake off. So you gotta be yourself, not give a damn what anyone else thinks, and let the chips fall where they may. You need to get to a point where YOU DON’T EVEN GIVE A DAMN IF YOU HAVE A SECOND DATE attitude when you’re on the first date. Yeah I know it’s hard and I’m still working on this myself, but I think it’s the path forward. Good luck to both of us. 🙂Report
I am standing on my chair cheering for New York [T2] and Chanute, KS [T3]. I hope things work out for the latter. (NY can take care of itself, I think.)Report
I’m in favor of municipal broadband. Not sold on municipal WiFi, though. But if any city can pull it off, New York is one of only maybe a half-dozen that could.Report
I have long (as in >20 years) been an advocate for having internet access over an Ethernet interface be a basic communication service* that should have the snot regulated out of it in order to provide (subject to some reasonability constraints**): (1) universal access, (2) high speed, and (3) moderate price. I see no difference in providing the service over Wifi (802.11) or wires (802.3). What difference do you see in the physical layer interface?
*Techno-babble: I see the basic service as a DHCP handshake that gets your device an IP address, a netmask, a gateway routing address, the addresses for a couple of DNS servers, and then transport of packets in both directions. Maybe a local NTP server. Extra-price options like getting the same IP address every time.
**For example, cable is a shared medium and is asymmetric, with much more downstream bandwidth than upstream. This implies some restrictions on how much data customers can push and for how long in order to avoid degrading their neighbors’ service too much.Report
I’m skeptical of the cost-efficiency of WiFi, mostly, as well as speed-coverage variances.Report
There are service situations where there is no access to individual households — eg, multi-story apartment complexes where the cable risers are already full. There are service categories that require wireless access that the city will have an interest in having available — eg, a wearable location-tracking device for elderly people who could stay in their homes except for a tendency to “wander” occasionally. There are people who only need low-bit-rate connectivity. The city no doubt has an interest in providing connectivity in its public spaces. Municipal Wifi isn’t a complete answer, but it’s an important adjunct.
Note that most of the people who benefit in the above scenarios are poor or elderly or both.Report
Well, my position is more of skepticism than outright rejection. I don’t have any objection to using WiFi to reach places we can’t, for whatever reason, with cable. A hybrid system seems rather different from what I’m understanding the NYC proposal to be, though, and the proposals batted around back home a decade or so ago.Report
My understanding is that what NYC is proposing is to provide ground-level access in public spaces. The advertised gigabit speed implies 802.11ac at 5 GHz, which has limits: 400 ft or so with line-of-sight and not too many users, maybe 50 ft (and much lower bit rates) if there are multiple intervening non-metallic walls and floors. Put in metallic separators and things get… odd. Some places work well because of reflections, some places are completely dead.
Anyway, for the most part it’s not an alternative to a “real” service with wires to the household or business.Report
F4: We can seemingly have a highly competitive, take-no-prisoners free market and global economy or we can seemingly have a large number of men who are marriage material. Having both seems impossible especially among men without college educations. Or Millennials who do have a college education perhaps. I think you might see not having a steady job matter less for college educated people who are more adaptable to freelancing.
M2: I very rarely buy full price items on-line. I will also probably wait until an on-line retailer has a really good deal. For example, Barney’s Warehouse is having an additional 40-60 percent off sale. There is a higher chance that I will pay full price for something in a real store because their stock is probably more limited and I will do a calculus about whether I think the item will sell out. I know some retail stores (especially at the higher end) buy one piece for every size. So they will have a shirt or pants I like but only one in my size. If I think that item will sell out, I will buy it.
L1: This story also came up a year or so ago because Israel has a rape by deceit law and an Arab man was prosecuted for telling Israeli women he was Jewish. There was a Jewish guy who was also prosecuted and convicted because he said he worked in the housing ministry and could get people good apartments. Dan Savage was heavily against it but others were for it and said Savage was being horrible and evil for opposing it. I think this issue is going to divide a lot of people. I am against the law but as I mentioned, it is seemingly a thing for a lot of guys to say they are something they are not and this annoys me too much for some reason. I disliked it when guys in law school would tell women at bars that they were hot shot lawyers instead of law students. Rumor had it that one guy I knew from school got himself on a “Don’t date this guy” website because of his lies.
L2: Minors should probably not be charged with statutory rape but it does not surprise me that guys are charged more because I would be statutory rape laws were created to protect the virtue of women and that bias still remains in the barely subconscious.
E7: An impossible to answer question. I’ve gone through this on OT before but there was something immediate and intangible but I knew that I wanted to go to Vassar immediately as soon as I set foot on campus. My family drove up for a special admissions weekend during my senior year of college. It was over a three-day weekend and I feel in love right away. I know a lot of other Vassar students and alums who felt the same way and we retain a fierce sense of loyalty to the school. A lot of us felt a bit misfity through out our lives and Vassar is where we found a sense of community and fellowship. So this would lean to students make the school but there is also something the school had to offer to give us this sense. We also liked Vassar for the small-size.
I would say that people who go to selective and more expensive colleges and universities are also more likely to be relatively to very economically privileged and typical college students. The NY Times published this article which bemoans how elite colleges are really geared towards 18-22 year old students and not the now more common “non-traditional students”. Most college students are no longer childless 18-22 year olds:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/opinion/college-for-grown-ups.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0Report
E2: With all due respect to MRS (and I hold MRS in the highest regard), I fear that his perspective on the matter may — may! — be tainted by privilege. More importantly, it seems wholly devoid of empathy. To say, “I wouldn’t be bothered by this, so you shouldn’t be either,” — especially to someone with vastly different life experiences than you — is a pretty callous response to someone’s emotional struggles.Report
@kazzy
Crazy busy IRL right now,so this will be brief.
As adults, we all experience events which are emotionally disturbing, which can distract us to a significant degree if we let them, but which do not rise to the level of emotional trauma. To me, emotional trauma is a close death, the end of a long term relationship, dealing with the serious illness or injury of a loved one, etc. Research has done a solid job of identifying such traumatic events, where highly functioning adults are effectively brought low while dealing with them, and we have something approaching objective standards regarding such things.
It is possible that there are students at Columbia Law School who have a close, personal connection to Eric Gardner, and for whom the failure to indict rises to the level of trauma. Such persons are perfectly justified in asking for an extension.
If there were High School kids, I’d give it a pass, since teenagers are still learning to work through & past emotional turmoil.
Large swaths of the legal student body, on the other hand… I wonder how many NYC lawyers asked the judge for, and got, continuances of their case because they were upset over the Gardner decision, or the Brown decision? If they can’t handle the issues surrounding an event that is not immediate to them in an objective sense, what will they do the first time they lose a critical motion, or a case, or have a judge rudely berate them in open court. These are adults in their early to mid twenties, they should have the basics of compartmentalizing & working through emotional turmoil hammered out.
Hell, I did, or I never would have survived basic training or Gas Turbine School.Report
@mad-rocket-scientist
I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said here. Rather, I just think that one person’s “trauma” is another person’s “no big deal”.
Are there students who are probably taking advantage of the situation? Sure. But some might feel legitimately traumatized by the events.
If I may speak from experience, I was a freshmen in college when 9/11 happened. It was the second, maybe third week of classes. I spent the morning watching the TV and before my noon class, I sent an email to the professor essentially saying that I was from the NY area — grew up in a town from which you could see the twin towers — and was too shaken to attend class. At that point, I couldn’t properly contextualize what was going on and he responded noting that all classes were being cancelled.
I was not personally affected by 9/11 and had no reason to think that I would be (no one close to me had reason to be in that area of the city). Yet I did not feel prepared to go to class because of that day’s events. If you had forced me to, I probably could have managed making it through. But left to my druthers, I opted not to.Report
Also, I was probably wrong to invoke privilege. I will walk that criticism back. Rather, I think it is probably easier for people like you and I — people who are probably good at compartmentalizing emotional reactions — to criticize others who are not. I have worked hard to take people at their word when they say that their emotional state is what it is even if part of me is screaming, “GROW THE FUCK UP!”Report
@kazzy
Again, we have some rather good objective standards as to what constitutes a traumatic emotional event. I think 9/11 qualified for a good many people, as it was something of a watershed event.
Regarding the trauma vs. no big deal, in 2006, my wife & I were hit head on by a drunk driver at highway speeds. Neither my wife not I were seriously injured (bumps & bruises, thank you Subaru). I shook off the event & was back to normal within 48 hours, my wife suffered a nasty case of PTSD that took a lot of therapy to overcome. For me it was no big deal, for her it was trauma, but I never told her to pull up her big girl panties & deal. Once we realized the problem, we got her help. However, objective standards indicate it is normal for such an event to be emotionally traumatic, and as such, I’m the outlier, not my wife.
However, the fact that yet another cop was given a pass on yet another killing of yet another private citizen is neither a watershed event, nor something that people significantly removed should, in general, be suffering debilitating trauma over, such that they can not hope to do well on exams. Certainly there may be the odd case here or there of a person with a strong emotional connection to the case, and such a connection could undoubtedly be clearly articulated such that school administrators could justify an extension. But a whole demographic?
My suspicion is that the students who are removed from the event, yet pressing for an extension, are not actually suffering from debilitating emotional trauma, but rather spent the time that should have been committed to studying, instead participating in protests, or discussions, or focused more on the news than the exam material. And while I certainly don’t begrudge them their participation in the political process through activism, one does have to prioritize their responsibilities, and organizations should not be expected* to adjust their calendars en masse did not want to study**.
*If the school had a large number of loud & disruptive protests on campus related to the issue, then the school probably should push exams back for everyone. I’ve tried to study when the whole neighborhood was in an uproar & it’s damn near impossible.
**I think I’m safe in assuming that if you’ve managed to get a bachelors degree, and pass the LSAT, and get accepted into a prestigious law school, you actually have the ability to compartmentalize emotions & the discipline to study.Report
@mad-rocket-scientist
I am going to walk back much of my criticism because I think I read too much into the initial framing of the article (which may not even have been your own). I read it as, “These folks don’t fit the textbook definition of trauma and need to put on their big boy/girl pants.” Re-reading it, I see you did not say anything of the sort. My apologies for misconstruing your point.
I will say — more generally — that I am not the biggest fan of attempting to define someone else’s perception of events. Perception is reality. It would appear at this point that we can objectively determine if someone has suffered trauma. But if someone feels as if they have suffered trauma, even if they haven’t, it leaves us in a tricky spot. We can’t say to them, “We took a blood test and you don’t have trauma!” And even if we could apply a battery of tests, if their internal emotional state is such that they feel traumatized, I don’t think telling them they haven’t is an effective strategy. Plus, as you note, there are outliers. If it is possible to exit a legitimately traumatic experience sans trauma, isn’t is also possible to exit a non-traumatic experience with legitimate trauma? I don’t know the answer to that but logic tells me it probably is possible. Lastly, imagine how you’d feel if after the accident, people repeatedly insisted, “No, MRS, you were traumatized. Your experience fits the definition of trauma. Stop being in denial.” You’d probably eventually have inflicted some trauma upon them.
I’ll have to admit my own bias in this situation, which is a bit of a weird one. Working with young children, I am constantly appalled when adults deny the legitimacy of their experiences. I’ve heard adults say to three-year-olds — THREE-YEAR-OLDS!!! — that they shouldn’t cry over, say, not getting the toy they wanted because “it’s not a big deal” or “it’s not worth crying over.” Who the hell are they to tell someone else what is or isn’t a big deal? What is or isn’t worth crying over? Imagine if we said that to an adult… “Look, I know you’re upset your boyfriend hasn’t proposed yet, but not getting what you want really isn’t that big a deal. It’s not worth being upset about.” They’d rightly be upset with us. EVEN IF WE ARE RIGHT!
I think there is a place, time, and manner in which we can help people — kids and adults alike — properly contextualize and manage their emotional responses. I just think most folks chose the wrong place, time, and/or manner. My initial reading of the article framing here led me to believe you were doing that but, again, that was my own bias peeking through so my apologies.Report
@mad-rocket-scientist
Garner, not “Gardner”
@kazzy
Imagine if we said that to an adult… “Look, I know you’re upset your boyfriend hasn’t proposed yet, but not getting what you want really isn’t that big a deal. It’s not worth being upset about.” They’d rightly be upset with us. EVEN IF WE ARE RIGHT!
To be fair, we say this to adults all the time. Look at how this thread turned against @leeesqReport
@scarletnumbers
Who told Lee that he shouldn’t be upset and should just get over it and “turn that frown upside down”?Report
@kazzy
More than one person implied that the situation was @leeesq ‘s own fault, which minimizes his personal experience.Report
@kazzy
“Look, I know you’re upset your boyfriend hasn’t proposed yet, but not getting what you want really isn’t that big a deal. It’s not worth being upset about.” They’d rightly be upset with us. EVEN IF WE ARE RIGHT!
Talking right past each other, we are.
I’m not saying these students aren’t upset, or that they don’t have a right to be upset, or that some of them might legitimately be suffering some kind of emotional trauma, but I can not fathom an entire demographic is (especially since the school was reporting a flood of boilerplate requests alongside some requests with explanations that were more fleshed out). Per your example above, the person above has every right to be upset, BUT; such an event would not justify special treatment at work or school, or justify inconveniencing others to accommodate their personal crisis, unless there is trauma involved. If said not-yet-engaged person demanded that their management give them an extra week right before a big meeting with key customers because they were too upset to get the job done, I don’t think we’d be arguing about whether or not management was wrong to give them a bad review, or fire them.
Ergo, if a student is truly traumatized by the event, if it really is something that overwhelms their ability to function, they will be able to articulate it in writing, or express it to an appropriate staff member. This is the kind of thing that should absolutely always be handled on a case by case basis absent some kind of watershed event (9/11, a Virginia Tech, etc.), specifically to maintain the appearance of fairness & equality.Report
@mad-rocket-scientist
Not so much talking past as I was going to my bigger beef with how we respond to other’s emotional distress and noting how I (unfairly) lumped your perspective in with that. I was trying to offer context and an example of why I tend to feel the way I do and why my kneejerk reaction was what it was. A fair reading of your comments indicated you were not doing what I had initially read you to be doing. My apologies.Report
@kazzy
No worries 🙂Report
More on colleges:
I do realize that the college could, by accident and/or design (likely both), create a brand and experience that attracts a certain kind of student, makes them fall in love, and later handover lots of money during development time.Report
[T4] Haptic-holographic pornography. ‘Nuff said.Report
Go on…Report
A) Big Porno will provide the funding and impetus for development, dissemination, and monetization of this technology, and
B) when it does so, we can expect that GNP will decline significantly, as workers will devote substantial amounts of time to consumption of haptic-holographic pornography instead of doing things like “working.”
It is the inevitable doom of America, as unavoidable as the eventual heat death of the universe.Report
Well, at least it’s more environmentally-sound and marginally-less-creepy than discarded mounds of 3D-printed sexbots in every dumpster in America.Report
Big Porno? Have we totally lost our way when Mom-and-Pop porno cannot find a foothold in the market?Report
Makes sense, Porn drove a lot of internet development…Report
Kazzy,
Don’t you mean Sis-and-Bro porno?Report
@kazzy
Yeah, mom-and-pop porno is so passe.
It has to be mom, pop, and 18 year old black kid from the playground.Report
I remember a lecture long ago at Bell Labs where the speaker’s thesis was that the foundations for getting any entertainment medium well established were sex and violence. He used cave paintings as the first example of this.Report
You wouldn’t BELIEVE how depraved the first things ever tapped out in Morse code were…Report
@michael-cain
In the book, A History of the World in 100 Objects, one of the earliest found sculptures is of two people fucking. They are very crudely designed but clearly a copulating couple.Report
[E4] I remember that! Must have been almost a decade ago, but it was really popular in the academic blogosphere at the time.Report
[T[5]] — the stellar collision post. Very cool, but far, far cooler is the very first comment on the post.Report
M4,
Of course there’s free shipping. Or rather, it’s quite possible to have Amazon spend more shipping you the product than you paid in overcharge. If you do that consistently enough (and remind Amazon to deliver on time), its quite possible that you can make Amazon lose money on you.
Amazon, in other news, doesn’t care.Report
Yeah; Amazon doesn’t make money on one purchase, it makes money on getting you to be a customer and buy something in the future. Maybe a Kindle, at which point you are 100% profit.
(Not to mention the fact that they can sell your buying patterns and demographic data to ad agencies.)Report
Jim,
I do own a kindle. I’ve never bought a book off Amazon for it, though.
If they aren’t selling your reading habits to authors Amazon is a bunch of idiots.Report
L3: This is actually often true. I did a bit of parolee class-action work at one time, and at that point the consensus best state at reducing recidivism was Kansas. I think there are two issues: (1) GOP is less worried about being considered soft-on-crime since that’s a liability generally associated with Dems, so they have more room to try creative solutions; and (2) as you say, prison is extremely expensive and GOP is far more motivated to reduce state spending.
As a CA lawyer, I saw it play out directly. Arnold’s office was far better to deal with than Brown’s, and the strength of the CA prison guard union relates directly to the fact that any democrat trying to challenge them would immediately be disqualified from statewide office as a dirty criminal-loving hippy.Report
Another explanation: “That’s not a prison, that’s a facility for an inpatient substance-abuse program. That’s not a prison, that’s a facility for pretrial diversion programs. That’s not a prison, that’s a facility that serves as a temporary holding site for parole violators. Hey guess what, our prison population is decreasing! Also, since the prison guards’ union only has jurisdiction in prisons, we don’t need to pay union rates for things that are facilities rather than prisons, so we save money too!”Report
Speaking of steady jobs. The NY Times just published this expose but men who don’t work:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/upshot/the-rise-of-men-who-dont-work-and-what-they-do-instead.html?src=recg&abt=0002&abg=1
They mainly seem to be men without college educations and who used to have decent blue-collar jobs but they were injured in some way that made doing the former job impossible and they can’t bring themselves (yet) to work for much lower pay.
That being said I found this article to be a bit anti-intellectual. One subject is a guy getting his Masters in Engineering at the University of Houston. Now I suppose on a very literal level he is not working but I think there are some interesting anti-intellectual implications in shamming someone for concentrating on getting an education instead of working a job. Isn’t the whole mantra of education that you do it for a while to get a better and more skilled job? The article lays out evidence that long-term unemployment is more likely for men without college educations so it makes rational sense to get an education to avoid longer instances of long-term unemployment.Report
It seems to me if someone is going back to school to get a degree in engineering, they’re trying to make themselves employable in the future. I doubt he is doing it for enlightenment’s sake, is he? That doesn’t seem like a bad thing.Report
That’s what I think! The bigger issue is what to do about guys (but really people) who are in their 40s and 50s and they suddenly get outdated skills. That is a bigger concern to policy wise.Report
G5 is a little disingenuous. First, Obama is increasing the number of undocumented immigrants who are eligible for already existing programs (which include work authorizations–the extra rights from the article), not granting illegals rights not possessed by legal immigrants out of the blue.
Second, more rights is inaccurate way to frame it would be to say that the undocumented immigrants have different rights. For example, they may be able to work anywhere in this country while the president and congress allow it, but they have no right to any legal immigrant status, or to eventually gaining citizenship–two mighty important rights.
Finally, on a tangentially related note, the limited employment opportunities available to a number of immigrants visas should argue for expanding their opportunities, not limiting the opportunities for people granted deferred action.Report
ugh, struggling to get ready for the office Christmas and didn’t proof read. The second paragraph should read, “a more accurate way to frame it would be to say . . .”Report
For what it’s worth, I do support legal immigrants having more versatile options when it comes to employment options, but that and a buck will get them a cup of coffee. A few legal immigrants I know are actually complaining about this. It would be interesting to know if, given the choice, who would prefer one set of rights and limitations over the other. There is a common assumption that there will eventually be a Path to Citizenship for those that did not come here legally, which if true would negate that part of the equation.Report
I will also say that now I am trying to remember the name of the best friend from Charles in Charge but am too lazy to look it up on the Internet…Report
Buddy Lembeck. Willie Aames, the actor, would go on to find Jesus, become the superhero Bibleman, and become a cruise ship entertainer.Report
Willie Aames also voiced Hank the Ranger in the Dungeons & Dragon cartoon. Kind of ironic that he became an Evangelical latter since D&D was a big bete noir for the Evangelical set during the 1980s. Whats with all these washed out eighties sitcom stars finding Jesus in their middle years?Report
I don’t know, but I would watch a really chappy Christian buddy movie (no pun intended) if it had Cameron and Aames in it.Report
1) The picture is obviously from season 1, when Charles was a bit more square than he was in later seasons. Season 1 was also the only one that aired on CBS; the rest were in syndication. Coincidentally, this show started the same year as Who’s the Boss?, with both had the premise of men working as live-in domestics in towns in the NYC DMA. In fact AMTRAK’s Northeast Corridor goes through both towns.
2) It was the later seasons that featured my first unrequited love: Nicole Eggert.
3) Buddy’s actual first was Buddence; his sister’s name was Bunnence or “Bunny”.
4) When I was in elementary school, I attempted to buy a Charles in Charge book, but my father vetoed the purchase; that’s why I was glad when he died…
5) FYI, by “Cameron” @will-truman is referring to Kirk Cameron, the boy who made Growing Pains and the man who ruined Growing Pains.
6) Isn’t it ironic that Alan Thicke’s actual child is much more famous than his TV children? When’s the last time you saw Jeremy Miller?Report
@scarletnumbers What about Leo?
I’d say his fame could kick any Robin’s ass up the street and back all day long.Report
@tod-kelly
Leo did not play a Seaver child, his name was Luke Brower and he was a student of Mike’s and later lived with the Seavers, but he wasn’t a Seaver per se.Report
M3: The argument appears to be that since casinos don’t provide infinite free money forever, they must be the worst thing in the world. He links to articles about the decline of casinos, which themselves attribute the economic decline to the loss of casino revenue to competition from other casinos (and, contra his assertions about Vegas and Macau, the linked articles talk about competition from other casinos in the same general region of the US). That’s, at best, an argument that you shouldn’t base your entire city economy on one industry, which Detroit proves even more thoroughly than Atlantic City, but somehow no one calls car manufacturing a scourge on low-income Americans.
The argument about the harms caused by casinos might be more persuasive, except there’s nothing there but bare assertion. His links to the supposed harms go to a dictionary definition of the word “rake” and an article about the panic a few years back about welfare debit cards working at all ATMs, even the ones at casinos, which is as bereft of evidence that welfare recipients are throwing their money away now as when it was being used to argue against welfare. Whereas those articles he linked earlier all seem to argue for real economic benefits to the presence of casinos (albeit only in the negative sense that the closure of casinos due to increasing competition leads to an end of those benefits).Report
The argument is that casinos prey on the lower classes, and that the regional economic benefits often touted are dubious. I previously linkied to a piece on the former argument. The latter argument, which is indeed due in large part to the increased proliferation of casinos, still holds sway. You can’t count on the benefits of being the only casino around if you’re not going to be.
Perhaps I am falling into the trap of confirmation bias, but I find it more than just intuitive that easy gambling would have deleterious effects on the lower income population.Report
I sort of wanted to say this when you linked to the article at the time, but I guess I didn’t get around to it. But that doesn’t seem to make a particularly convincing argument unless you already accept the assumption that gambling is bad and it’s always bad when people (or at least poor people) do it. Despite the (brief, and with no attempt to examine the scale of the issue) mention of increased finacial problems related to casino proximity, the bottom line of the article appears to be that people are gambling more, and that alone is enough to make casinos bad.
Like:
“The goal, though, is not to clean out the gambler in a single visit; it’s to provide an experience that will induce the gambler to prolong the time spent on the device….A second goal is to ensure that gamblers visit more often and continue to do so over time.” The goal is for people to visit regularly, spend a small amount of money each visit, and enjoy the experience even when they lose (“as gamblers deepen their immersion, they become less interested in winning itself than in simply continuing to play”)? That’s the nefarious plot? Most of the article seems to be about casting as negative a light as possible on what’s basically responsible gambling, basically treating it as an entertainment expense.
Gambling probably does have real downsides, as almost any policy does. And I have no doubt that most of the ills that gambling does cause fall disproportionately on the poor and ethnic minorities, as the article claims. But that’s also probably true of just about any policy (particularly any economic one); they’re simply more vulnerable (ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected by traffic accidents, of all things).Report
“that doesn’t seem to make a particularly convincing argument unless you already accept the assumption that gambling is bad and it’s always bad when people (or at least poor people) do it.”
To be fair, that’s not a particularly difficult assumption to accept.Report
Late day addition but this is a big wow:
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/jun/06/shakespeare-curtain-theatre-shoreditch-east-lonfon?CMP=share_btn_fbReport
As a Garden Stater, I feel compelled to contribute.
My favorite New Jersey link from the last week involves the New Jersey Institute of Technology. They upset Michigan in mens basketball a week ago in Ann Arbor, when UM was ranked 17.
NJIT is the only NCAA D-I school that plays as an independent in mens basketball. The Wall Street Journal chronicles their struggle to join a conference.
The America East is the best fit for them, since that is the home of 3 out the 4 SUNY schools.Report