In "What is Conservative Culture?" (July 3, 2006 issue of The New Republic), Rick Perlstein reports that a new kind of prom has spung up in some fundamentalist communities. It's not for high school seniors but for prepubescent girls. They dress up in party dresses and take their fathers as…
Next month, it will be 467.
How do I know? I consulted one of the many life expectancy calculators available on the Internet. The MSN calculator I used takes into account personal behavior, family and personal health, lifestyles (including alcohol and cigarette use), diet and exercise and driving habits. Based on my lifestyle habits, I have just determined that I’m scheduled to die at age 89, 39 years from now.
I have no grounds to complain about the small-seeming number of months I have yet to live. I’m certainly not looking for pity. Compared to many other people, I’m doing well. People in the Stone Age (ca. 8000 BC) lived only about 20 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, the average person lived only until my current age, 50. In African countries hit hard by AIDS, the average person lives a total of only 30 years, significantly less than my remaining life expectancy at age 50. This is a phenomenal and disturbing statistic: at age 50, I am expected to live longer than a child born today in Zambia.
The reason I wrote this post, though, is that calculating my remaining life expectancy is much more than mathematics. I’ll try to explain. Perhaps this experiment won’t have the same effect on you, but it might.
First of all, why calculate my remaining time in months rather than the years? Because as an adult, the month turns out to be the most basic unit of time. Years …
The Federal Communications Commission and industry lobbyists are once again trying to let huge media companies get even bigger by resurrecting the same rule changes that millions of Americans rejected in 2003. It's hard to believe that anyone at the FCC could actually be considering the welfare of the American people…
According to the Indianapolis Star, the reporting from Guantanamo will be less diverse: Now, the Pentagon has shut down access entirely -- at least temporarily -- expelling reporters this week and triggering an outcry from human rights groups, attorneys and media organizations even as the prison comes under renewed criticism…
Binary: compounded or consisting of or marked by two things or parts.
You know that feeling of resentment that wells up inside when someone enters your space and dumps chores on you? It breeds a lot of resentment. That’s how neo-conservatives feel about progressives. Neo-cons hiss and spit when they speak of progressives because progressives try to dump lots of extra work on neo-cons.
What kind of work, you ask? The work of actually having to get to know people before judging them. It’s a lot of work. No wonder conservatives express such animosity toward progressives!
For the next minute, step inside the collective mind of the neocon . . .
…We had to retaliate against Iraqis when people from Saudi Arabia attacked us. Sometimes you need to show those people who’s in charge.
I check in with conservative talk radio quite often. In the privacy of my SUV, my radio reminds me that all unmarried mothers are failures. All welfare recipients are trash, of course. All drug addicts should be thrown in prison for a lonngg time. Well, except for Rush. All immigrants should be kept out of the U.S.A. Who the hell do they think they are, trying to get what we have.
Homosexuals? They are clearly immoral. Criminals, actually. . . guilty of something. Do I actually know any gay