tasmlab

My wife and I were initially agreed that Santa would just be a game we played i.e., he'd be known fake from the beginning but it would still be a game to go to bed and then wake up to find that santa came and left presents. Then we chickened out and just did the santa thing like most people. And it thrills the kids to no end. Then last spring I botched a tooth fairy mission and came out to my 7-year-old that Santa, bunny et al were not real. She was disappointed for a second and then sort of really thrilled with the knowledge. I asked her if we should continue the ruse with the younger kids. She thought so absolutely and now delights in sharing the secret. Yea, it's lying. But its for fun and is gleefully dismissed later. It's not like religion where the belief is to cause fear and then never relent. To the OP, Halloween is a lot of fun! So is candy! You are right that two is a bit young unless you want your daughter to hand out candy. But when she gets older, you can dress her up like Ayn Rand (make sure she is smoking a cigarette) and raid the neighbors for fun size snickers.

Scientists are currently trying to synthesize meat i.e., grow it without the animal. It will be nice when they get it right. We can just skip this debate whilst we munch on our hamburgers.

On the website, his CAMPAIGN team probably could've pulled it off flawlessly. I sent the Obama campaign (and the Romney campaign) three dollars to be put into their marketing machine. Their web/mobile/email machine was pretty well oiled.

Maybe, but: - The social stigma about dumping garbage is pretty ubiquitous and damning. - If a public space was available and people started using it as a dump, would it look much different than a city owned dump at that point? - I would personally pay for the convenience of somebody coming to take my trash, just like I have somebody mow my lawn and clean my house. I wouldn't be surprised if free market garbage might even be cheaper and more convenient than it is now. If the garbage company could legally hire non-union, migrant labor they could actually man the truck with twice as many people for half the costs. As a customer, I wouldn't have to haul my cans to the curb, they would come to where I keep them, haul them themselves and return them where they belong. I am curious how paying for garbage would change consumer packaging. As it is now, so much of the food we buy comes in tupperware or ziplock bags. Our sliced ham is actually in a plastic bag inside of a resealable plastic container. If I had to pay more to dispose of it, I might settle for paper and I'm sure thriftier customers would bring the containers back to the store to have them refilled. This is one clowny part of left environmentalism - I don't think they consider the role free trash removal and free roads might influence human behavior.

I would love to see some material from Stef directed purposefully at children. Maybe around 9 years old. If we were to achieve anarchism, atheism and peaceful parenting, it might not be such an interesting subject. We sort of have this experience with dead religions. We tend to study greek mythology, not the ideas the debunked it. Hopefully the kids will read about Christianity and Government and delight in that people 'back then' did such perverted things. The new normal might not be something they study. Surely I'm talking Star Trek sized time scale here!

I presume the victims of Nagasaki and Hiroshima weren't too happy to have a government in charge of nuclear weapons. Since they exists, maybe somebody nice like Bill Gates can buy them and hold on to them as a deterrent. Or what if they were owned and managed by a charity? Would you donate to a charity that hosted deterrent nukes for your geography? Or similarly, in the future, could a company or charity develop an anti-nuclear device and offer it as a protection service? Similar to the vision for Reagan's star wars?

We certainly try when we can. There still certain interactions where there's only a second to act and we have to pick up the baby against her wishes. I've been trying to catalog the interactions to a degree to see if I could've acted differently.

It would be interesting to see if the graph reflects a moving target for poverty. If they keep expanding the definition of poverty it could cause the graph to flatline or change direction over time. Also, if they started defining poverty as persistently the bottom 15% of the population, poverty would never be solved even if the poorest person had every thing they ever wanted.

Personally we need to do the moving and taking against the will pretty frequently with the 2 year old. If she is goofing around in a busy parking lot, we pick her up. Brushing her teeth almost always involves a bit of coercion (holding her head and brushing her teeth) and she resists frequently. I'm not sure how to get around this. We'll use a timeout with the two year old very infrequently (e.g., biting incidents) where we make her sit in a chair in the same room we are and she is forbidden to get off for a few minutes. The other kids have had these with severe issues like biting but almost never anymore. The boy got one for slapping my face a few months ago (there's more to the story) The biggest gray areas in peaceful parenting, for me, are teaching accountability, consequences, good behavior and that parents can be angry within the model. If a child does something that is bad, they need to be taught what it right. When they do something wrong in the world, they must learn that there are consequences. At what point do these lessons look less like peaceful teaching and more like authoritarian-power-differential-hypocrisy can seem subjective to confusing to me. (Note: I don't claim to be a perfectly peaceful parent - still learning!)

Good point. If I could invent the most benign case, e.g., between the anonymity of the net and maybe a cheeky bit of exhibitionism she found this to be a convenient way to make money from home. Maybe she swings a little bit for fun. It's not the FDR way, of course. If you weren't abused as a child and in need of therapy you have no business here! It might not be too much of a stretch to suggest that she somehow lost touch with a normal sense of sexuality/intimacy and sense of self/body on some level similar to a stripper or prostitute.

I'll do my best! 1. We haven't had to force naps, they usually want them at the 2-3 age. But my wife often lies down with them at napping age. Same with bed time, our toddlers have typically slept with us which I know is unconventional. I'm not sure what we would do if they gave us a hard time. Nap failures usually result in not requiring them to take a nap. This can be rough if you have something to do later. Nothing to ever lead to hitting, though. 2. Ugh, this happens constantly if I understand you. We try to encourage the older child to find an alternative for the 2 year old if they both want the same thing. Sometimes ask the older child to concede to the 2 year old for a few minutes until they forget like you say. 3. Boys are violent spazzes from the get go, IMO. We've never struck him and he'll wrestle and hit his older sister, hit me, hit the boys he plays with (who hit too). He's five. It's like living on the set of Jackass. Obsesses over guns and swords. This said, he almost never hits with the intent of hurting someone but it is almost all play. So I wouldn't and couldn't attribute it to spanking. I don't know if this is sounding too rosy. We have to correct bad behavior a dozen times or more per day. The two year old will have something to protest cry about a couple of times a day or more. Just not with hitting or yelling or anger involved. I know in your OP you ask for something more comprehensive than 'don't spank', but that may be a great place to start. And not just start not spanking, but treat it as an absolute and in-violatable discipline. I'm going to spend the weekend extra-paying attention to how we solve disputes and bad behavior over the weekend. Maybe I'll write another note if figure something out.

I found the sentiment that political action was useless to be more refreshing than hypocritical. It made me feel that he understood the contradictions of his position better than it might look.

I can sort of chime in on number 3: I have three children (2, 5, 8) and neither my wife nor do I spank them and would be horrified to do so. Things seem to just go along fine without it. I can't imagine what a 'spankful' household would look like. Sounds awful. Our only (relatively) severe discipline problems have come with the youngest of the kids biting people at age 2-3 and we have had to resort to a handful of timeouts, largely because the incidents happened with overly spazzy play. They also got a talking to in a very stern voice on the biting occasions. All other bad behaviors we just solve calmly, sometimes with negotiation, sometimes with incentives. My kids are superbly behaved just naturally though, so maybe I just got lucky. I wouldn't mind taking some credit for good parenting.

The gearwhore! Collecting musical equipment has clearly become a hobby unto its own, completely divorced from the act of creating music. I've seen it for thirty years.

I've read the first third but have since lost it (will probably buy another copy). Interesting points: - He explicitly says that political action is the least effective way of achieving liberty (says the congressman of 30 years) - The key will be with the self - i.e., individuals changing themselves for the better - We might be able to do something if we get a large enough population to duck the public school system. Reading it, you'd almost guess the good Dr. has been listening to Stef (maybe save for the little religious speak). Hopefully he will stop listening before he gets to "Dr. No Friend of Foe"

Hi LovePrevails, Highly recommended. It's a super short book, but if you really only want to get the most value and limit your investment. Buy it and just read the first 20 pages or so. You'll get the gist. It's organizational skills for the power set, but the most important point is creating systems so you don't have to keep everything swirling in your mind continually swirling in your mind. In this sense, it is good also if you think about philosophy or political theory, etc., a lot and find yourself sometimes keeping too much active in your head at one time. The majority of the book after the intro then talk tips and tricks, with no shortage of office supplies. You can buy it used on Amazon for as little as 50 cents. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0142000280/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1380824090&sr=8-1&keywords=getting+things+done&condition=used

Just to muddy the waters with technicalities for no good reason, there do exist "religious atheists", with the largest example being Hindus who believe in the practices, traditions and supernatural forces and such (Karma, Dharma) but don't believe in any of their deities (Vishnu, Shiva, et al). For general purposes, though, I would lump folks who accept rationality as atheists and then there's everybody else regardless if they worship trees or make up God in their head. What you said here gave me pause and sounded awful to me: " I experience all other creatures on this planet as my Brothers and Sisters, who need our protection from this infection we call the Self."

I would recommend being as proactively disarming as possible. E.g., - Let them know that you won't be constantly be anti-religous around them, insist on debating them, being disrespectful* - Let them know that you won't be ruining any family traditions and that you'll celebrate Christmas etc.** - Let them know that it makes you happier and that they needn't worry about you - Express how important family, morality and virtuousness is to you, so they know you aren't looking for a pass to go Motley Crue*** on them You may find yourself helping other nascent atheists in your family come around with your great example. * Do all this stuff later after they are already use to you being an atheist ** If it is true. We have atheist Christmas at our house without a problem. No reason to throw out the fun stuff, as long as you are straight with your children. *** Popular hair metal band from the eighties

I found most online debates, esp. places like Facebook, alternet, huffpost, Reason, Daily Kos and hosts of other places, focused more on closing the conversation and being 'right'. Everybody wants to be 'right' and nobody wants to be curious. Which means they can't become any smarter, because one can not become smarter if they know all the answers and have no curiosity. If I debate liberals these days I mostly try to insist that they be good liberals (be anti-war, be anti-corporatist). Even that is challenging!

I Gnostiphile, I agree that they are issues of respect. I'll check out the podcasts. Thanks!

Hi Guys, Thanks for your posts. I feel like your overstating my confusion or resistance to the topic. I get the top-line premise. Again, I was more looking at the ticky-tacky day-to-day behaviors that I could benchmark against. Discussions on things like having bed times, limiting candy consumption, denying unreasonable requests for new toys, changing rude behavior, setting limits on video game time, encouraging sharing, putting on sun screen, doing chores, doing homework and such that are much more tactical than just understanding 'respect' and not being abusive. My first post was likely poorly written to my intent. And this board delights in finding deeper meanings in every conversation.

I'm a professional writer, although not the fun kind. I write on management theory and technology trends for large companies. I earn a nice paycheck (low-mid six figures) and don't work a very tough schedule. My degree is in water color painting and acting without a single English class. So in my experience, an English degree isn't necessary to become a writer and could cripple your earning potential. Chemical engineering sounds way more interesting. And marketable. I would seriously not conflate a desire to write fun fiction stuff that you enjoy with the activity of paying bills. I'd separate them. Use school to drive income*. Write on the side and do it with the reckless passion that someone does something they enjoy. If you try to contort your fun writing into something that pays bills you will likely ruin it. Maybe even hate it. That you don't write anything concerns me. All you need is a computer and notepad. Or even just paper and pencil. I'd recommend writing at least 10 or so stories/screenplays/video games, etc., and see how it goes before pursuing a nearly useless English major. And, your English profs will likely completely take a shit on you if you want to write video games or movies or Sci-fi or comedy or anything that doesn't feel either academic or like proper art. As for dating girls - this is the one spot an English major is greater than chemical engineering :-) Just my opinions/assertions. * I didn't do this and don't regret getting a worthless art degree. So you could totally convince me that the English major would be the way to go.

I never found 'asking girls out' to be the best method of getting together. Usually I would (and really just about everyone) would end up at the same places with the girls they liked be it class, a club, a bar, parties at mutual friends house, wherever. And then you can invest all sorts of time getting to know each other, putting out feelers, having chuckles or nice talks or whatever. And by the time you want to invite them out for a beer or for icecream, you are already great acquaintances/friends. Going on a date with somebody I didn't know very well sounds torturous. (disclosure: I've been with the same lady since 1995. I haven't been in your situation in a looooonnng time)

the disparity looked wide enough and the two people in such different places in their lives that I would want to question motivation beyond love. I'm probably hooking on to television style stereotypes.

Is being born into wealth much different than being born good looking, especially talented, exceptionally strong, etc., or any other advantage bestowed randomly to children? The most sweeping lefty argument I've heard on social justice, though, would compensate for these shortcomings/advantages as well. The idea was "If you could design society before you born, and you didn't know whether you'd be rich or poor, handsome or ugly, able or handicapped, etc., the way you would design it would reflect social justice i.e., you would design it to accommodate all of your potential weaknesses." Perhaps this is nuance, but I don't believe libertarians believe the free market as the great equalizer. It's just voluntary exchange. And wealth inequality has to occur; it's how the market picks the winners, rewards the most in-demand products/producers, signals demand, etc. Maybe I misunderstood your point. I don't think inequality itself is an amoral concept. One person having wealth doesn't inflict poverty unto another. And any action to create equality in wealth that wasn't voluntary would require force, and that would be immoral.