July 30, 2010 1 Comment
“We agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that taxes are the price we pay for civilization [but] if the public does not believe that tax increases are buying more civilization, however, it will resist them. And if mistrust of government does not abate, the public will be inclined not to see such gains, even when they are real.”
- William Galston, writing for Democracy Journal
July 28, 2010 Leave a Comment
Megan McArdle discusses the Democrats unwillingness to kill the filibuster:
Lest this seem like concern trolling, I should note that strategically, I’d probably be happy with the results of killing the filibuster, at least in the short term; I don’t think the Democrats will accomplish much even with it gone, and there’s a nice chance that the Republicans, empowered by the nuclear option, will busily undo many of the elements of the Democratic agenda that I disapproved of. It just seems to me that Democrats are making the correct risk-reward calculation here.
I would agree with her assessment. It’s political calculation. Pundits complain about the use of the filibuster these days as a symptom of a corrupt GOP that is completely resistent to change. While I’m in agreement that current Republican opposition to change is mostly rooted in political strategy, it’s also important to remember that a skepticism towards change is sort of what conservatism is all about. I’m also reminded of a recent David Brooks piece that makes the point that no legislation is better than bad legislation.
So when we’re arguing about politics, we should be aware of how policy fits into the larger scheme of cultural and social influences. Bad policy can decimate the social fabric, but good policy can only modestly improve it.
…
Most of the proposals we argue about so ferociously will have only marginal effects on how we live, especially compared with the ethnic, regional and social differences that we so studiously ignore.
McArdle seemed to recognize the same general point at the start of her post:
I’m broadly pro-filibuster, but then I have an aversion to legislative activity, so that’s hardly surprising.
A Washington mostly filled with entrenched Baby Boomers who gave up any pretense of intelligent governing years ago is better left fighting over nothing than enacting bad legislative policy that may do harm long after they are gone.
July 26, 2010 Leave a Comment
The Rural Blog parses a pretty tough piece by Maureen Dowd about the Obama administration. It seems they are making serious missteps towards the African-American community, something I assume they didn’t think they really needed to worry about.
Dowd notes that Obama was “raised in the Hawaiian hood and Indonesia,” and writes, “Unlike Bill Clinton, who never needed help fathoming Southern black culture, Obama lacks advisers who are descended from the central African-American experience. . . . The West Wing white guys who pushed to ditch Shirley Sherrod before Glenn Beck could pounce not only didn’t bother to Google, they weren’t familiar enough with civil rights history to recognize the name Sherrod. And they didn’t return the calls and e-mail of prominent blacks who tried to alert them that something was wrong. Charles Sherrod, Shirley’s husband, was a Freedom Rider who … was a key member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.”
I think there’s a lot to this and maybe we should have it coming. President Obama, to his credit, wants to create an atmosphere that makes it appear he will not tolerate any kind of bad behavior from his administration. As a member of a Cabinet agency, Sherrod fell under this umbrella and it’s why she was ousted so quickly. Now that the whole story is known it’s clear this was an overreaction. Easy to do when you are walking on eggshells to avoid the perception of racial favoritism.
This even also points to the racially charged under-current that comes with having the first black President. There were always going to be charges of racial preference. This is no different from the way Bush was maligned by some minority voices after Hurricane Katrina (remember Kanye West?) Race still matters to some people but more importantly there is always the belief by some that Presidents and their administrations cannot be impartial. That is a very hard hurdle to overcome.
The converse of this story is that if something like this happens in the future, the administration may under react in an effort to avoid the same mistakes.
July 22, 2010 4 Comments
As I wrote about last week, our summer yard project is the establishment of a native grass prairie in our backyard. We were delighted when one week after seeding the first signs of life began emerging from the area. We’ve had a lot of rain since then and now 2 weeks later the area is becoming very green and lush. Almost too lush… (cue dramatic music)
I took some pictures this morning to send along to the seed company.
And a close up of the little monsters
For the unfamiliar, this is crabgrass, scourge of the suburbs. I fired off a quick email to Roundstone Seed this morning and apparently our best option is to do nothing for the time being. If the natives achieve a good height this year (8 inches or more) we can spray a herbicide that will hopefully kill the crabgrass and leave the natives intact.
Ugh.
Gardening is never easy.
July 20, 2010 Leave a Comment
“When the Man waked up he said, ‘What is Wild Dog doing here?’ And the Woman said, ‘His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always…’
- Rudyard Kipling
July 19, 2010 1 Comment
I had a very firearm-filled weekend. On Friday night I took a friend out to the farm for some shooting. On the way out my backseat contained 5 guns of various types and ammo for each. If we had been pulled over by a police officer on the way there would have been nothing illegal about our cargo. On Saturday I took two of my rifles to the gunshop for some work to be done. Again, they rested on the backseat for the trip and there was nothing illegal about it.
Given the casual nature of gun ownership in the U.S. it is extremely hard for me to even get my head around stories like this one from the BBC.
Norma Elizabeth Crowder from Butler Walk was arrested by police investigating rioting in north Belfast last week.
The 49-year-old denied knowing anything about a loaded revolver and ammunition, which police said were found under decking in her back garden.
She was granted bail and will appear again in court next month.
The court was told her home was a short distance from the Ardoyne shop fronts.
There was several nights of serious rioting by republican youths, in the area following an Orange Order parade past the shop fronts on the 12 July.
Police claimed the revolver was found in a hide which formed part of decking in the back garden of her property.
During questioning, a PSNI officer said police believe the decking was either built as a hide or had been adapted for that purpose.
He also confirmed the German revolver contained six live rounds, with a quantity of other ammunition also recovered.
I realize that Northern Ireland is a rough place but stories like this could appear in other Western European nations. In Britain the gun laws are incredibly restrictive in comparison to US law. Very hard for me to even comprehend. What’s interesting is the way that those laws have become so entrenched that the majority of the public sees them as completely normal. What’s even scarier is that there are some folks here in the US that find the European model enviable.
July 15, 2010 Leave a Comment
Scott Adams (creator of the Dilbert Comic Strip) has a great blog that I follow. He recently wrote about the iPad (which I still want with an intensity that burns like the sun). He covers some of the great things he has discovered about the iPad and also notes a trend the iPad points towards:
Another interesting phenomenon of the iPhone and iPad era is that we are being transformed from producers of content into consumers. With my BlackBerry, I probably created as much data as I consumed. It was easy to thumb-type long explanations, directions, and even jokes and observations. With my iPhone, I try to avoid creating any message that are over one sentence long. But I use the iPhone browser to consume information a hundred times more than I did with the BlackBerry. I wonder if this will change people over time, in some subtle way that isn’t predictable. What happens when people become trained to think of information and entertainment as something they receive and not something they create? I think this could be a fork in the road for human evolution. Perhaps in a million years, humans will feel no conversational obligation to entertain or provide useful information. That will be the function of the Internet. Someday a scientist will identify the introduction of the iPhone as the point where evolution began to remove conversation from the list of human capabilities. And when the scientist forms this realization, he won’t tell his spouse because conversation won’t exist. He’ll put it on the Internet.
Although Adams takes his point to the extreme it’s interesting to note this divergence in the purpose of our electronic gadgets, with one being consumption and the other being creation. The industry seems to have noted that by streamlining electronics to meet only the needs we require of them, they can produce amazingly compact items devoid of unneccessary bells and whistles. For the person that just needs 30 minutes of music for their daily jog, an iPod Shuffle is a lot wiser purchase than a full 80 GB iPod. The same can be said with an iPad versus a laptop for those who mostly just consume material on the internet.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with simply using the internet for consumption. We all use TV, books and newspapers in exactly the same way. I worry that Adams’ post comes across as slamming those who aren’t creating original content on the internet as some sort of leeches on the rest of us that do. That’s unfair. Like all other goods, the internet is a two-way relationship. Somebody creates and somebody buys.
July 14, 2010 3 Comments
As a proponent of suburban living I still come into contact frequently with a mindset among city dwellers that the suburbs lack charm, social interaction and culture. Joel Kotkin does a pretty good job at dispelling those myths in a piece he recently wrote for Smithsonian Online.
On social interaction:
But suburban residents express a stronger sense of identity and civic involvement than city dwellers. A recent study by Jan Brueckner, a University of California at Irvine economist, found that density does not, as is often assumed, increase social contact between neighbors or raise overall social involvement; compared with residents of high-density urban cores, people in low-density suburbs were 7 percent more likely to talk to their neighbors and 24 percent more likely to belong to a local club.
On culture:
Suburbs epitomize much of what constitutes the American dream for many people. Minorities, once largely associated with cities, tend to live in the suburbs; in 2008 they were a majority of residents in Texas, New Mexico, California and Hawaii. Nationwide, about 25 percent of suburbanites are minorities; by 2050 immigrants, their children and native-born minorities will become an even more dominant force in shaping suburbia.
Kotkin also writes a lot about changing trends in housing and the importance of suburban locales. I though this comment was insightful:
A new landscape may emerge, one that resembles the network of smaller towns characteristic of 19th-century America. The nation’s landmass is large enough—about 3 percent is currently urbanized—to accommodate this growth, while still husbanding critical farmland and open space.
I’ve noticed this trend a bit in recent years since my wife and I got married and we bought a house on the edge of our city. The peripheral areas in our county still identify strongly with Louisville as our hometown and there’s a serious allegiance there, but I also see community-based identities forming that focus on a smaller area and promote a small town image. Some of this originates in an artificial way with planned communities and heavily regulated neighborhoods popping up here and there, but the attitude that grows out of these seems to be organic. The only complaint I have is that I wish there were more opportunities for interaction between these small communities and their rural neighbors.
Kotkin also points out that a few things are going to have to change, namely the over-consumption of fuel by suburban commuters. He optimistically points out that this should be mitigated at least in part by the shift to working from home that solid internet connections is bringing about. Since I hope to be on that train at some point, I of course also love to hear it’s a growing trend.
July 13, 2010 2 Comments
After moving to our new house in February we found ourselves in possession of a newly fenced-in backyard that was essentially a blank canvas. No trees, bushes, etc. I’ve been interested in the idea of planting a native grass prairie for several years and so we decided to make our first yard project an experiment of sorts. I did some homework and decided to put in a perimeter of native grasses and wildflowers.
The project started by marking off a 3-foot perimeter around the yard and killing the grass off with Roundup. You can see here what it looked like after 2 weeks.
I actually thought it looked kind of cool like this if only we could have the same look but about 3 feet high. Anyway, after three weeks the grass had thinned out more as seen below. Murphy is also pictured here in one of his favorite spots.
Our next step was to remove as much of the dead grass as possible. I borrowed a gas-powered weed eater from a friend and spent a couple of hours attacking the grass. The end result was pretty close to what the seed company told me I needed. Nearly bare, compacted soil.
Planting day arrived and we had our seed mix ready, courtesy of the folks at Roundstone Seed in Upton, KY. The mix contains about 30 plants and 3 lbs only costed about $19. A real bargain and I’m happy to be supporting Kentucky growers.
I should also add at this point that I cannot recommend Roundstone any more highly. The product was shipped quickly and packaged neatly. The thing that impressed me the most was the time my contact at Roundstone spent with me via email and phone answering my questions. I’ve never done seeding at this micro-level and my questions were probably a bit silly, but if you don’t ask you won’t know. They were patient with me and I learned a lot.
To hear a bit more about their operation, download this podcast from WFPL’s HomeGrown and head to the 8:30 mark.
Because the seed is so light it has to be mixed with a heavier material to make it broadcast better. Roundstone recommended using cat litter with a mix of 4 parts litter to 1 part seed. Here’s what that looked like.
My youngest daughter did most of the broadcasting after some brief instructions. I supervised and took pictures. I love the concentration that is clearly evident in this picture. She covered the entire area we cleared for planting and then I walked back over it broadcasting a second time in a perpendicular path.
The cat litter also helps to get a visual on where the seed is falling. This is what it looked like after the first pass.
Our next step was to dress the area so as to encourage good seed-to-soil contact. In a large-scale operation this would be done with a culti-packer but in our backyard we had to do this by hand. We used some chicken wire with bricks on the end. My daughter is demonstrating here. Unfortunately this was a bit too heavy for her so I was the one that actually did the pulling. Quite a workout.
Not pictured here is the good watering I gave the area the following morning. We should have some green shoots breaking through the soil in a week or two. It can take up to two years for the plot to be fully established but we should see some interesting plants as early as September. This has been a fun project so far. Also good for the environment. The grasses will reduce water consumption for over 600 sq feet of our yard which means more rain water will make it into local streams. Wildlife will find seed and new pollens which will help both birds and bees. Lastly I will not be using the electricity I normally take up with weed-eating the area every couple of weeks. We’ll let this grow and the area will be maintenance free.
July 12, 2010 Leave a Comment
I’m adding my two cents on the recent Massachusetts ruling on gay marriage, despite the fact that a zillion other bloggers have already said their piece.
So, I’ve never really like DOMA for a few of reasons. The first is that I don’t think it was necessary. By passing the law Congress implied that the state laws were vague on just who could get married and therefore the federal clarification was important. I would dispute the necessity of that. While I would agree that some states never specified heterosexual-only marriage I don’t think any reasonable judge would assume those who framed the law were allowing for it. This sort of goes to the age-old question surrounding the Constitution. Are rights only available when they are spelled out or do we assume any rights not specifically forbidden?
The second more important point on DOMA is that it codified discrimination. By its very passage DOMA recognized gays and lesbians as a group of people and not just a bunch of individuals with a particular sexual preference. After recognizing them, it then specifically excluded them from marriage. I have a problem with that. This is along the same lines as the various state bans on gay marriage. I don’t like the idea of our laws being used to specifically exclude members of the population. Now, before readers go thinking this means I am endorsing SSM, I would caution you to reconsider. My position is that sexual orientation has yet to be recognized as a protected class so therefore it would be incorrect to say that removing DOMA equals legal SSM. I just believe we shouldn’t write laws to keep people out of certain institutions. The positive criteria for participation should be spelled out when the institution is created.
Looking beyond this ruling I think it’s clear that the future of gay marriage lies with two very clear paths, each with their own pitfalls and potential for success. The first path is the state legislatures. With the right tactics minorities can hold a lot of power over these bodies as was proved a century ago when Prohibition passed. SSM supporters had great success in Vermont and elsewhere and you will notice a significant lack of serious complaint from the Right. Conservatives can usually be counted on to support states’ rights and if various states want to allow for SSM I think most of us are willing to accept it regardless of our personal feelings. So I think we could see maybe 50% of the country accepting SSM within ten years if momentum keeps building on their side. Of course the negative side of this is that it still leaves a portion of the gay population residing in states that will not allow them to marry. On that subject I think I am firming up my belief that we need to allow for a few basic privileges for same-sex partners, such as health benefits and medical decision-making, but if they are unhappy about no marriage in their states, it’s time to move. This seems harsh but state and local governments legislate morality all the time. Many residents of my state deal with blue laws in their home counties and choose to stay or go depending on how much it bothers them. No one is forcing them to leave but if they stay there are certain rules they have to abide by.
The second path is obviously the courts. As we’ve seen Supreme Court isn’t vital to the allowance of gay marriage in some states but it is the only way to force it in on states that would never allow it on their own. I see the next presidential election as pretty critical to the future of the judicial strategy. There are several justices poised to retire and whomever is President in the next term may control the political leanings of the Court for a generation. I expect this battle to be a hot one in 2011 and 2012. And of course, I’ll be watching with great interest.
July 8, 2010 Leave a Comment
I got some tough feedback from my wife on yesterday’s post. She said she liked the points I was making but thought it came across a bit too angry. She’s probably right. As parents with older children who are often frustrated by the lack of availability in our friends, there’s probably a bit of resentment brewing right below the surface which came out yesterday. So… a few points of clarification:
Contrary to popular belief among some of my friends, I actually like kids and I think parenting is great. I am not a disinterested parent or a less-than-enthusiastic parent, but I also believe parenting isn’t everything. True, some would say it is the most important thing we can do with our lives and I’m not disagreeing with people who feel that way, but even if it is, there’s got to be more. You’ve got to have a life that doesn’t revolve around play dates and t-ball games. Kids used to entertain themselves for entire days with no help from mom and dad and they usually turned out just fine. Some of my greatest childhood memories are of fun I had under my own direction.
I’m also not suggesting we constantly leave our kids in the care of babysitters , though in my opinion smart parents will keep one on speed dial. The main point of my post yesterday was really that spouses should support each other in making sure each has some ‘me’ time. That means taking sole responsibility for the kids at least a few nights per month and maybe 4-5 weekends per year. Wives should be able to go get a manicure. Husbands should be able to go golfing with their friends. Wives should be able to go shopping with their mothers. Husbands should not have to feel guilty about an afternoon tinkering in the garage.
The great thing about being married is that you go from being a solo act to part of a team. The thing I love best about my marriage is that my wife and I are a hell of a team. We support each other and we take care of each other. Last Saturday my wife was recovering from a week of little sleep and so I got the kids up early and we got out of the house for the morning. I got some quality time with my daughters, my wife got to sleep until noon in a quiet house and when we came home everyone was in a good mood. She does that kind of stuff for me all the time too.
So parents – let’s all remember that you wanted those kids. If they are running the show at your house, take back your life. You’ve earned, you deserve it and your kids will actually respect you for it.
July 7, 2010 Leave a Comment
Last week I met up with a very old friend who I haven’t seen in over a decade. It was a great chance to catch up and hear about the twists and turns our lives have taken since high school. At some point our conversation turned to free time and how much or how little we each had. In a moment of great joy I realized he and I were on the exact same page with regards to our views on parenting. You could call our perspective the ‘old school’ and I will try to explain why.
Since most of my friends have children under ten years old I’ve been able to note some trends among them that I find a little troubling. The main one though is the way none of them seem to have any free time anymore. By free time I mean time where they can do grown-up things with other grown-ups that aren’t their spouses. The friend I was meeting with last week noted the same phenomenon with some of his other pals. The excuse always seems to be that they just don’t have any free time because their kids are so overwhelming and they can’t leave their wife alone with them for very long. I find myself wanting to ask what would happen if they got hit by a bus tomorrow. Would the kids have to go up for adoption? A good rule of thumb for the parents of one who are thinking about having another is this; if your spouse’s sudden disappearance would mean that you couldn’t handle the kids on your own, maybe you shouldn’t have any more.
This problem does not just affect social time but also seems to directly impact the amount of work one can get done around the house. One friend recently saw my neatly organized garage in our new house and asked, “How do you find the time?” I have some other friends who have had to hire cleaning services for their homes. Still others haven’t taken a trip in years because, “It’s just too exhausting”. I find all of this really hard to swallow.
My wife was recently complimented by someone who realized how much harder it must have been for her when she was a single mother. I’ve gotten similar remarks from people who remember me as a single father and now have kids of their own who they have trouble keeping it up with even with the assistance of a spouse. I guess this proves that successful single parents are even more awesome than we give them credit for (yes, blatant self-compliment there).
As my old friend and I discussed the issue he noted that even now, if he has a project to do or an errand to run or even wants to go to the archery range, he just takes the kids along and expects good behavior. I always did the same. Assembling a piece of furniture? You would be surprised how good kids are at holding small parts until called upon and how good it is for their self-esteem if you attach a slightly exaggerated amount of importance to it. If you’re doing something they can’t help with, there’s nothing wrong with expecting them to sit quietly and read a book or play with some toys. I once painted an entire kitchen with my youngest daughter quietly playing in the next room.
I’m all in favor of letting kids be kids but I note that 100 years ago very young kids were entrusted with much more responsibility than they receive today. A family farm would have relied on children for important tasks like milking, gathering wood or even light cooking. There’s no reason to believe a child of under ten can’t do some basic chores around the house in 2010. I would also mention that this probably makes them much more responsible adults. There’s also no reason to believe they can’t keep themselves entertained for an hour or two when mom or dad has a chore to complete.
Kids are great and I admire involved parents. The only problem these days is that we let our children occupy a greater and greater part of our lives at the expense of other parts that are equally valuable. No matter how much we resist our kids will eventually not need us. It would be a real shame if when that happens we realize that we’ve forgotten how to take some time for ourselves.
July 6, 2010 3 Comments
How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning.
- D.H. Lawrence, 1918
June 29, 2010 Leave a Comment
Right now I am reading a series of articles in Newsweek about education reform. They are thought-provoking and my head is swimming with new ideas. The early take-away is that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is living up to the hype and the President is doing a good job in backing him. The articles also hammer pretty hard on the point that teachers’ unions are probably the greatest obstacle to reform. The rhetoric is a little strong even for my taste but consider this point:
At Central Falls High School in Rhode Island, half the students drop out of school, and proficiency in math measured by state exams stands at a pitiful 7 percent among 11th graders. Under state pressure, the local superintendent, Frances Gallo, tried to improve scores by requiring teachers to work 25 minutes longer each a day, eat lunch with students once a week, and agree to be evaluated by a third party. The teachers, who make about $75,000 a year, far more than average in this depressed town, balked. They wanted another $90 an hour. So Gallo took a brave and astonishing step: she recommended firing all 74 teachers. Her boldness was praised by Education Secretary Duncan—and supported by President Obama. The teachers’ union initially squawked that everyone was unfairly “blaming the teachers,” but then last week backed off under a storm of media pressure and accepted the new rules requiring teachers to spend more time with the students.
For a lack of a better adjective, that is badass. The tides are turning my friends.
June 28, 2010 4 Comments
Our oldest starts her junior year of high school in August and this is the year the experts say we should start figuring out her plans for after graduation. First on the to-do list is to figure out what we can afford based on tuition, financial aid projections, scholarship potential, etc. Next on the list is to narrow the list down to a dozen or so schools that she is interested in and that we can afford and then start researching them, visiting and trying to narrow the list further. My personal goal is to have a list of 5-6 colleges that are serious contenders by the end of the 2010-2011 school year. She can spend the summer composing admissions essays and fretting over the minute details of her applications.
Another possibility that I want her to think about and she has been surprisingly willing to consider is to sit out a year and join a group like AmeriCorps. I think the experience would be pretty rewarding and if nothing else, maybe she will appreciate school that much more. Before we dig too far into that option we need to find out things like how college applications work when you want to wait a year and if the work she would be doing with a service group would be worth the commitment.
The last option I still want to keep on the horizon is junior college. This one is an area of friction between myself and my wife. She thinks it is a bad track to take and won’t give her the full ‘college experience’. I think it’s a smart choice financially as it gives her two years to save up money which might mean more choices for a university. Not surprisingly, I went to a junior college before transferring to university and my wife did not. My experience was a positive one while she also had a positive experience on a university campus, making friends, taking part in campus activities, etc.
I don’t know that there is a right or wrong answer but I was comforted a bit last week when I was talking with a family member who is also a dean at a college in the midwest. We were discussing the explosion in junior college enrollment and he was extremely complimentary of the education that someone can get at many of these schools. He confirmed what I experienced myself which is that in some cases the junior college professors exceed what one finds at a university.
Lots of options on the table and I hope we all enjoy the experience. The most important thing is that we find the best fit for our daughter and I am confident we will.
