BABIES
I love babies more than most people.
When I hear young male friends say that they never what children, it confuses me.
Having children is one of our prime directives. We are programed for it. I think they should ask their own parents if they were worth it.
To be responsible for another human being to the point that you would gladly die for it, is a concept alien to all but parents.
Children do change your life, true, but within a week of birth you can't imagine living - really living - without it.
It's comforting to me that people all over the world love their children just as much as I love mine.
Not that there aren't adjustments to be made...
I often said that you can tell a good dad by the way they hold their babies.
I held mine just like this...high and face to face. I wanted to see exactly what she was looking at and the reaction she was having to the stimulus. That would tell me where she wanted to go, what she wanted to investigate and whether she was pleased with her discovery.
I used to sit for hours and watch my babies learn.
But be careful. They can only learn from what they experience.
They are not born to hate. Parents teach that...
Babies are not born to feel superior....
The job of childhood is to learn everything they can about the world they have inherited.....
Every game they play teaches them something. I played games with my children constantly....
The exploitation of children sickens me...
And exploitation is not just a problem of the third world...
Adults in every culture have holidays and such meant to scare children....
But real fear is a travesty....
Now there are places where children are turned to the ones being feared....
Nothing could be as immoral.....
FAMOUS PEOPLE
I saw this guy in a movie. He is very, very good. Do you recognize him?
He played that cold blooded killer in "No Country for Old Men".
"Hell, my ten year old could have done that."
No....no they couldn't have....
"Hell, my ten year old could have done that."
No....no they couldn't have....
I had read "Grapes of Wrath" three times before I realized that the chapters were organized so that every other chapter was a "history" lesson. He would explain what happened to the country, then in the next chapter he would tell how the characters dealt with it.
If you look up Hero in the dictionary, this is the picture you should find....
If you look up Hero in the dictionary, this is the picture you should find....
Charles Bolden: astronaut now head of NASA.
I met him one time. All I could think to say was "Thank you." He looked at me as if he didn't understand.
This man went to my daughter's high school...
PLACES
Never will I bore of this....
What a beautiful photograph....
I ride on roads like this all the time. If a car gets behind me I gladly pull off and let him pass....he doesn't want to be late and I don't want to get in a hurry...
I saw this. It's a window at Meteor Crater and it looks exactly like a mural....
MISCELLANEOUS
I may know something about this movie that you don't...
After amassing so many "little people" in Hollywood, it was decided not to let them go to waste. So they made a western featuring nothing but midgets and dwarfs...
This is a German soldier. He loves his wife. He found to the death because he knew his side was right....just like every soldier that ever lived....
The article said the the European Union only allows $10,000 to cross the border at one time and they catch people all the time.
But, the borders are open. You can just walk across. Why not just take $9,000 over and over again until you get all your money across?
What this tells me, is that each worker now does the work of two or three and there will never be cause to rehire those workers....
But, the borders are open. You can just walk across. Why not just take $9,000 over and over again until you get all your money across?
What this tells me, is that each worker now does the work of two or three and there will never be cause to rehire those workers....
I see nothing wrong with this....
TOONS....
ONE OF MY VERY OWN....
TWO WOMEN AND A HORSE...
8 comments:
I myself don't want kids mostly because I'm not ready (really immature) but even if I did, I would want to adopt one instead of sperming up an egg. Also, the idea that it's part of our biological drive therefore it's an ethical must is just... wrong. What if a scientist or inventor would have spent time he would've spent with a child coming up with a fusion reactor or an AIDS vaccine?
Also, I have many friends and relatives who have seen combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other nations in Asia Minor, and they all felt, both during and after their tours, that what they were doing was wrong, futile, or both. That "God and Country" mindless soldier thing isn't really true. Tangentially, the phrase "there are no atheists in foxholes" is rubbish.
ps I love those damned boots. The high heel aspect of them is dumb but the colors and laces are great. Thigh-high socks are an even better look. See also this photo, which doesn't feature thigh-highs but is also really lovely.
Not mature enough...interesting.
But if you think about it, you probably felt you were too immature for first grade. But about 20 minutes into your school career you dealt with it just fine, thank you very much.
Everyone feels not mature enough until it happens, and I can assure you, nothing matures you like having the total responsibility of a living being.
It's really not all that difficult. You just dedicate your life to someone else....piece of cake really.
I truly felt a spiritual epiphany.
My daughter is everything to me. Watching her grow and mature (mostly) has been the most rewarding thing I have ever done. As a parent the best you can hope for is that when you send them on their way, the right lessons stick and the imperfections fall away.
You may appreciate that she is Army Intel. Made a father happy that they wanted her for her brains!
You play things off as if everyone has good parents. I do, but I don't know that I would be one, as self-centered and unrooted as I am. I know dozens absolutely hateful, shitty, socially immature human beings that are horrible parents, and their hateful shittiness stems from, you guessed it, being self-centered and unrooted and immature. The mere act of producing a child does not make one a good parent.
When I think about it, honestly, I do think I could handle the responsibility. I could be a good dad. But it would mean spending time with the kid so that it could have the kind of childhood I had, and I would rather spend my time doing other things.
I can wait. Like millions of other Americans, I may never have a kid. And if I don't produce some new sapient combination of genes, I can be sure billions of other people will have a whack at it...
I can only tell you what I told my daughter when she said that she didn't want to have children to help fight overpopulation.
She said this shortly after getting her PhD.
I countered with your "billions of other people" argument with the added caveat of those billions of stupid people. I then suggested that if smart people did not reproduce, then we are going to get stupider and stupider.
With her genes, her off-spring could very well be the person who solves the problems instead of creates the problems.
Or (and this isn't an attack on your daughter, just a rhetorical point) her kids could be the next Hitler or Stalin.
It appears we would come down on different sides of the "nature vs nurture" argument. I'm pretty far over on the nurture side. I know a guy with an IQ as high as mine (high enough to get into the Triple Nine Society) who is serving two life sentences for a brutal double homicide. I know a lady with Down Syndrome who has an IQ of around 70 who nonetheless, of her own volition, donates regularly to several charities and leads an active, effectual life in her community.
*shrug*
It's obvious that genes influence a person's capacities, but rather than being 1/2 the overall picture I'd put them more like 1/4 or 1/5, the rest of it being environmental. The even distribution of intelligence across all strata of society tells me "genes" aren't that big an indicator of future success — the biggest factor is sheer, blind luck (where and when people end up being born). There are potential Einsteins dying in landfills and gutters every damned day, ditto potential serial murderers and genocidal tyrants.
My parents made sure my environment was conducive to appreciating learning, being fairly tolerant of others, having workable social skills, etc. I could do the same thing, but it would take a lot of effort I'd rather direct at other things.
Also, your daughter's overpopulation argument isn't a good one. The planet could probably sustain three times as many people as it currently does. We in the West would need to stop being so wasteful, and we'd have to teach developing countries how to farm and live sustainably (which would be pretty hypocritical given our current consumerist lifestyles and center-pivot agriculture in the fucking desert). We already produce enough food to feed the world population and then some, it's just not economical or politically feasible to get it where it needs to go...
... I can ramble like a schmuck all day long.
Not to belabor the issue, but I thought the argument about smart people more often having smart children was settled in human kind's natural selection process, i.e. bigger brains equal better chance of survival.
Let's move on, shall we?
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