The French...offer world-class dinner conversation to boot. Their secret: They don't want to know what you did yesterday; they want to engage you in a lively discussion of ideas.
Really? I kind of suspect people are equally boring the world 'round.
We have … the highest ownership of color TVs
We have more digital watches, too. Take that, community of nations.
I kind of suspect people are equally boring the world 'round.
I've known a few Italians who seemed pretty disgusted with the crappy U.S. dinner conversations as well.
Slightly cliched, but honest, so fuck it:
From the French, I'd take:
1) Taking most of the evening to eat dinner
2) Being able to talk, and even shout, about politics and religion over dinner without actually being in danger of killing anyone or having to leave the family
3) Salad after, rather than before, dinner. Actually, I already have taken this one.
4) Being less hung-up about nudity, body image, and sexuality. Not so much at dinner, I mean, but in general.
5) Whatever it is that makes all their dairy products so goddamned good.
Way easy:
#1, from Europe: if you must subsidize agriculture, arrange it so that the average consumer can pick up actual tasty bread for a dollar. The same applies to dairy, eggs, etc... Enough with the high fructose corn syrup.
#2,from Latin America: Life is boring. Designate certain days when your town/neighborhood rocks ass. One doesn't have to follow the Christian calendar if it should prove inconvenient, but the effect should be both local and communal: federal holidays don't mean shit to most people. Nobody in SF should work on Harvey Milk's death day.
#3,from everywhere else: Would a functioning passenger railroad system mean the end of the US as we know it? Where is the drawback here? The interstate system has cash up the ass, but God forbid I should be able to buy a SF-Seattle ticket cheaper than I could fly. The Southwest/Amtrak price ratio refuses to comply with thermodynamic laws,.
/bitch>
Oh, also cough syrup w/ minimal amounts of codeine, internet cafes, specialized food shops, and smoking inside.
High-quality ingredients (incl. bread) without breaking the bank, respect for leisure over stuff, not getting apoplectic over nudity, health care, free vocational training.
Nobody in SF should work on Harvey Milk's death day.
I never thought about it, but that is so obviously true. Harvey Milk day SHOULD be a bigass holiday in SF.
I live in a traditionally Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, and every July, for a week, the whole neighborhood positively lights sparklers on its tits in honor of some dead Italian friend of Jesus whose significance I don't understand, but these people look like they're a lot more into this holiday than the ones we're all stuck with every year.
The leisure over stuff one would be the biggie for me.
smoking inside.
see, in principle, I agree with this; yet in practice, I prefer the American way.
Give me 5 weeks of paid vacation a year, and everything in #5.
Yeah, the holiday thing would stop me from ever moving USward. I think my partner's up to 31 or 33 days now. Plus 8 public holidays. He was looking at a job at Galway University the other day, and everyone gets two afternoons off in July for the Galway races, which we liked.
re: 13
A former colleague's wife used to moan about how many holidays she had -- they had moved from the US to the UK and she had gone from 2 weeks a year to 5 or 6 and was shocked and disgusted.
(I thought she was a freak ...)
A former colleague's wife used to moan about how many holidays she had
In order for this country to progress, apparently some of my fellow Americans are going to have to be taken into the woods and shot.
re: 15
Yes, apparently she didn't know what she'd do with all that time off. Talk about poverty of the imagination.
Go out and spend the money she hadn't needed to spend on medical insurance?
I find that French dinner conversation to be really bourgeois and self-satisfied, usually on topics about which the interlocutors know nothing. And salad after dinner? Max used to insist on it, and our non-French dinner guests just got confused. ("Is this, uh, dessert?" etc.)
Now, North African dinner conversation--that's where it's at. It's like French conversation with irony and hospitality added.
It would be nice to have health insurance, I bet. Can we import some of that? Think they have some extra?
re: 17
They were kind of funny about that, too, actually. I remember them moaning about national insurance payments, and they were outraged about the TV license and spent ages trying to find a way to get round it (as in evade paying it while still watching TV).
I couldn't make sense of it -- they were otherwise very nice people.
What would you steal from the rest of the world?
Oil.
To be honest I still find the TV license kind of weird.
AWB, everything isn't about Max. The healing crystal you were sold apparently wasn't up to the job.
Europe subsidized non-classical music (i.e., "jazz" in various forms). A lot of American jazz musicians end up there for that reason. We should follow their example.
And go to Europe? No, subsidize jazz.
the Galway races
Aye, but didn't ye have to hawk yer old man's braces?
I dunno, it seems like, with the exceptions of the national heath, vacations, lack of insane militarism and fewer psycho-Xtians, you can find a lot of the best stuff from around the world here already, just in smaller quantities, and not as evenly distributed as it ought to be. Of course, if I lived in Houston or Hartford or Huntsville instead of the Twin Cities, my perspective might be different. Oh! The one thing we should definitely have more of is cinematheques. The Egyptian Theater in LA is great, but every major metro in the US ought to have its own.
I am with gswift. 5 wks of vacation and a helping of Number 5.
Better shoes! In terms of quality, production methods, and style.
In many parts of Europe, I am given to understand, people don't think you're a raving loon if you talk about environmentally sound design and production. Also, in some cities they have big anarchist squats that aren't horrible and filthy but are, rather, pleasant and nicely built up. And many people around those squats feel that it's at least an arguable premise that there shouldn't be unused housing when people are homeless.
The expectation that there's a pension system/state retirement program--that this isn't some kind of historical fluke but a basic civic practice.
Healthcare, of course, and the trains and the holidays.
I like the idea of local holidays because we have local celebrations (not, alas, holidays) here, and they really make my year.
On an unrelated note, Unfoggers, you know what I had for dinner last night? A big slice of hippie pizza with roasted squash and what tasted like a very very thin layer of ricotta under the mozarella from The Wedge. the yuppiest co-op in town. I also had a really delicious ginger cookie. Never surrender when pizza is in question, that's what I say.
I agree with Minnepolitan's observation that a great many of the good things are available here, not everywhere here but in some places. I would add that indigenous things, local produce and meat and other specialities, are also often good, and much better than an imported thing, considering how expensive, transported and often bedraggled the latter become. To say nothing of supporting the local, so that our culture can have the variety, and attention to pleasure and quality and pride, which is what we're valuing here anyway. I say, develop and treasure what we have.
High density, multi-use development.
Comprehensive traffic calming in residential areas.
Constitutionally protected rights guaranteed by an independent judiciary (oh wait, we're supposed to have that one already, aren't we?)
From the Netherlands, a sensible and sane policy toward recreational drugs.
lack of insane militarism and fewer psycho-Xtians, you can find a lot of the best stuff from around the world here already
Wait, what part of Africa are you imagining?
Two separate groups of friends have reported having awesomely pleasant encounters with African soccer fans (Cameroon and Ivory Coast) at the World Cup, so maybe "how to be a sports fan in a foreign country without making people want to punch you".
On top of the agricultural stuff mentioned above, what about sane city planning/development? The focus on suburbs & sprawl isn't unique to here, but it really is over done. Having usable public transit, metros, walkable & cycleable spaces in cities doesn't have to be the exception.
Oh, and how about getting rid of the recently acquired stupidity about child safety?
But, I have to say, there aren't a lot of other structural institutions or cultural practices that I'm in a rush to important from the African societies I've spent time in. Plenty of things that are just fine, some ways of life that work pretty well, but nothing where I say, "That's so much better than anything I have or do, I'd really like to bring it home with me and see that change."
Someone who was strongly religious might find the intensely felt spirituality I've seen in some places in Africa an appealing thing to bring back to the US: it always feels much more genuinely "seated" in the person, much more emotional and experientally intense for the believers...I think it would be harder to be a conventional political figure or elite who claims to be a devout xtian without actually being one in that context.
Fuck universal healthcare; prostitute nurses seem like enough.
From Australia, Morning and Afternoon Tea as a standard part of the workday, together with proper flat whites and friands available during it.
Nurses who become lovers, as in Everyman.
a sensible and sane policy toward recreational drugs.
I already have one of those.
Take some good advice, Tim, lad.
OMGFLATWHITES. That is seriously God's beverage.
And, on the theme of the thread, we should learn from other countries and be a little more chill about pasteurization.
Remember, a cloverleaf freeway interchange needn't be complete to be totally cyberpunk!
- Lagos, c/o Rem Koolhaas
What's with the obsession with vacation? If I were a country, and I encouraged 2 months off a year, it would be because I was in the genial twilight in my life, and just wanted to relax. All well and good, but not for me.
of my life.
God, I'm so sick of Amtrak in the states. It was so cheap on the West coast; I would take the Coaster from LA to San Diego all the time, as well as Berkeley-Bakersfield. But now I can't afford to get from DC to NYC. What a joke.
43: no. I could see 3 weeks being normal, of course on top of the de facto 2 weeks of vacation around Christmas and Thanksgiving already. I guess I would want enough so that I could hike the John Muir trail if I wanted, but I like my job enough such that more would just stress me out. It just seems lazy to me. If I hated my job and it was a job that served only to finance what I was *really* interested in, I would feel differently.
Maybe I'll change my mind when I have sprogs.
42: By the same token, a country working itself to death might be in denial about the fact that it's heading toward its twilight years.
more controversially? given the last few decades: a parlimentary democracy (I can't think of a single one to steal, but think that several fall into the less-broken category that this. Or more accurately, the easier-to-fix category).
re: 46
Yeah, but most people hate their jobs. And even people who really like their jobs aren't actually going to suffer from having a few extra weeks off.
counterfly, me old mucker, more people hate their jobs than don't. Take it from me. And don't give me the "well, they should get another one then" shtick - that's a privilege for the youngish. fittish and overeducated only.
the de facto 2 weeks of vacation around Christmas and Thanksgiving already
You live in a different world than I do.
Maybe I'll change my mind when I have sprogs.
You mean once all of your vacation hours are consumed by teacher work days and staying home with sick kids? Yes, you might.
we should learn from other countries and be a little more chill about pasteurization.
Yes, please. Raw milk cheeses for all.
Regarding leisure time, I practically have the European model as it is: 4 weeks of vacation a year, plus a four day work week (not 40 hours crammed into four days, 32 hours a week.) Plus all the regular holidays. Since I work in a secure area, I'm not allowed to be in my office after 6:30 PM or on weekends.
When I started here, I had all these plans for what I'd do with the extra time: write, do some research, read things I'd been putting off, go places. In practice, I mostly sit around surfing the net and doing laundry.
Counterfly, let's take a walk. The woods are beautiful in the springtime.
Man, you people are so unAmerican. If you don't truly love your job, to the point of stealing time from your personal life to work more, there's something really wrong with you -- probably a deepseated character disorder.
Probably some sort of system under which people have access to health care. I know libertarians view this idea as hilariously absurd, but in my imagination I know that someday someone will try it somewhere, and it might work.
re: 54
I'm quite relaxed about the idea that I might be unAmerican ...
54: Yeah! Just because 300 million americans hate their jobs, doesn't make it right. Drink the coolaid, people!
Nono, I understand that I'm lucky. But, as one who's youngish, fittish, and overeducated, 6 weeks of paid vacation (on top of automatic sick time?) seems excessive to me.
For what it's worth, I spent the better part of a week in the (wintry!) woods just a month ago, and all this weekend drinking and watching cherry blossoms. With girls.
I'm for inviting him for a walk in the woods in the spirit of Felix Dzerzhinsky.
58: You'll have to give me some pointers one how being overeducated opens up more job opportunities. My experience has been just the opposite.
Having just returned from a month in Egypt, here's what I would import from there.
1. More exciting non-alcoholic drinks and more frequent offering of them. I was doing research, and every office I went to they would offer me (turkish) coffee, tea, mint tea, fresh-squeezed lemonade, fresh-squeezed mango juice, hibiscus tea (hot or cold!), and sometimes other shit too. I actually didn't drink much alcohol on the trip cause I was too busy drinking mint tea (throw a bunch of fresh mint leaves in a pot of hot water and steep for a few minutes? Delightful.) and smoking apple-flavored tobacco.
2. Cafe culture, and things to do while in the cafe that are social, i.e. something like backgammon (which I totally suck at, but is fun). It pains me that the American equivalent might be sitting in a bar drinking alcohol instead of coffee and watching sports instead of interacting with people.
3. The practice of taking kids everywhere (and letting them go places alone). As a bonafide kid-hater, I feel weird saying this, but Americans think of kids as way too confined to the private sphere. When I was in Cairo, there were kids everywhere, with their parents and without, hanging out in the mosque, in the supermarket having picnics by the Nlle, eating in restaurants in their school uniforms, playing soccer in the streets. I go entire days in Chicago without seeing anyone under 18 or so. I think it gives everyone a better sense that kids are a part of society, and a communal responsibility, makes kids more independent, gives them more of a chance to interact with other kids and adults, and is in general a way better way to live. I attribute much of my independence and competence as a newly-on-my-own 18 year old to the fact that I'd been running around getting shit done for like 8 years already.
the de facto 2 weeks of vacation around Christmas and Thanksgiving already
You live in a different world than I do.
Shrug. It's like the vaccination battles: if half the office takes vacation days around then, the other half gets effective in-town vacation days because nobody's around. If nobody takes 'em, everyone works...but that never happens.
If kids make it all different, then I'll try to enjoy my childless years while I can...
As a bonafide kid-hater, I feel weird saying this, but Americans think of kids as way too confined to the private sphere.
This is way true, and it makes American kids obnoxious and hateable. Irritating behavior is much more tolerable in private than in public, so they don't get snarled at enough to develop decent public manners, and they don't get competent.
re: 61
Yeah, 3 is a good one. The UK is getting increasingly wierd about kids too.
63: So, okay, is this a paean to preternatural grumpiness, or what?
60: I don't think the claim was more job opportunites. Rather, the `overeducated' are much more likely to enjoy the job they have (assuming they have one). That certainly matches my experience. For example; for all the whinging about academic jobs & opportunities I hear and sometimes participate it, even a bad one beats the hell out of a lot of things I've done.
60: you're ignoring the fact that anyone with an advanced degree can make gobs in, say, management consulting. Just sell yourself in the right way. The tradeoff is that you end up with a job where you probably want 6 weeks of time off, minimum, to restore sanity. Theology can be the sideline gig.
59: why the hate?
re: 59
One of my funky Soviet cameras is from the Felix Dzerzhinsky cooperative.
The difficult aspect of the kid thing is that it's very class-based, I think. The richer the kid, the less likely they are to be wandering around alone, or really seen in the street at all, even with their parents. It's as if rich people can afford to send servants out to run errands (instead of sending their kids out, which is what everyone else does) and have constant childcare, while poor people have other shit to worry about than whether their child is constantly attended to and protected from every possible danger. In the United States, I think the level of kid independence ends up being both class and race-dependent; when I do see kids alone or in groups with other kids on, say, the bus or the train, they're uniformly African-American (sometimes Asian if I'm on the right train in the right area).
So middle-class White people see letting your kids run around unencumbered as irresponsible and "not what [my] people do."
re: 69
Yeah, it's similar here in the sense that you're much more likely to see kids running about doing kid stuff in working class areas.
69: This is true. But it is both a new pattern, and a pretty stupid one.
Why can't we live in enlightened, topless, Europe?
This is driving me insane, because Sally's getting very close to the age where I think we should be able to, say, send her to the store, or let her walk to school with the pack of kids from our building that go to the same school. But no one else does, and talking Buck into it is going to be impossible, and if we let her go to the park by herself someone would probably call CPS on us.
I know what we're doing is wrong, but it's really hard not to conform.
you're ignoring the fact that anyone with an advanced degree can make gobs in, say, management consulting. Just sell yourself in the right way.
Um...an advanced degree in what?
My kids, both of whom are still under 18, ride the same train you do, and have for years. This is common in their circles, which must be small. It's true when I pick them, and watch people leaving the trains, very few of the other kids are white.
re: 73
If there's already a pack of kids from the building walking to the school, what's the problem?
73: I've often realized that we have no conflicts over our children's freedom because my wife grew up in the city and enjoyed this freedom herself as a girl. If she'd been from the suburbs, it might not be possible. But I'm from the suburbs, although if I laid teffilum I'd give thanks every day I don't live there now; what would Buck's objection be?
76: With a parent. At the age they're all at (Sally's seven, Newt's five, the other kids go up to nine), I think they could manage just fine on their own probably now, certainly next year, but Buck and the parents of the other family wouldn't go for it.
74: Um...an advanced degree in what?
An advanced degree in selling yourself as "my degree gave me the critical thinking skills required to excel in the consulting field, and I'm not an MBA and I know you're looking for some fraction of people who are outside the MBA box."
Granted it's a smidge harder for a theology (PhD? M.Div?) than, say, a civil engineer, but I've seen a brit-lit PhD and an architect pull it off.
It's irrelevant if you can't stand the thought of the gig, though.
77: He's from the country, and was wandering around the woods at night as a kid from about this age on -- but he's just bought into the idea that it's not safe, and doesn't want to argue about it.
If nobody takes 'em, everyone works
At my job, the end of the year is scramble time. If half the office takes vacation days (and indeed, that's about the rate), the other half is working twice as furiously to try to hit the end-of-the-year deadlines with reduced staff.
I'll try to enjoy my childless years while I can
Believe me, having kids 1) reduces your actual vacation time *hugely* and 2) totally changes the kind of vacation you can take should you manage to accumulate the time to take one. Do your traveling now.
Sally's getting very close to the age where I think we should be able to, say, send her to the store
This idea made me laugh out loud at first...a little girl going to the store alone, how could that happen? Like sending a parrot flying to the store and flying home with a bag in its beak. But then I remembered that in some places, you can walk to the store instead of driving!
Counterfly, you seem smug, that's all. Unfogged is a safe zone for certain kinds of haters.
82: Oh, she wouldn't even have to cross a street -- it's a couple of hundred yards downhill and around the corner.
Yeah, I wasn't suggesting scofflaw driving.
This is great: Like sending a parrot flying to the store and flying home with a bag in its beak.
Isn't it not kosher to take vacation when there are deadlines to be met, and you're burdening other people, i.e. a terrible waste of any acquired social capital? I'd resent the hell out of a coworker who disappeared on vacation near an important deadline.
Yeah, travel, definitely. I just realized the other day that all these places I wanted to go (namely Iceland and the Bahamas) are totally more cost-effective now that I'm on the east coast than when I was in LA.
83: Yeah, I see the smug thing. Long vacations as a sign of a country in decline, and all. I'm sure I'll be paid back in spades when I simultaneously get hired at a job I end up loathing but can't quit, and have triplets at the same time.
85: Shrug. It's the accepted time that people travel to see family; those vacation requests go in months ahead of time. Meanwhile, our company gets contracted to do work for other companies so we don't quite get to choose deadlines. It's simply the reality of the industry I'm in.
those vacation requests go in months ahead of time.
Yeah, I guess that's fair. I was thinking more like "hey, I need Bob's expert advice on sprocket greasing, otherwise the client will bolt, and...wtf? He's in Tahiti? Since fucking when? GodDAMMIT."
get hired at a job I end up loathing
Doesn't have to be loathed, it's just that even a job I enjoy is going to come out a distant second when compared to things I do on vacation.
84: That's depressing (that Buck would have bought the irrationallity strongly enough to preclude 100 yards down the street, If I understand you correctly).
This makes me think of Barbara Kingsolver's essay about living in the Canary Islands with her young daughter:
For several months I've been living in Spain, and while I have struggled with the customs office, jet lag, dinner at midnight and the subjunctive tense, my only genuine culture shock has reverberated from this earthquake of a fact: People here like kids. They don't just say so, they do. Widows in black, buttoned-down c.e.o.'s, purple-sneakered teen-agers, the butcher, the baker, all have stopped on various sidewalks to have little chats with my daughter...
With a mother's keen myopia, I would tell you, absolutely, my daughter is beautiful enough to stop traffic. But in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, I have to confess, so is every other person under the height of one meter. Not just those who agree to be seen and not heard. When my daughter gets cranky in a restaurant (and really, what do you expect at midnight?), the waiters flirt and bring her little presents and nearby diners look on with that sweet, wistful gleam of eye that before now I have only seen aimed at the dessert tray. Children are the meringues and eclairs of this culture. Americans, it seems to me now, sometimes regard children as a sort of toxic-waste product: a necessary evil, maybe, but if it's not their own they don't want to see it or hear it or, God help us, smell it.
re: 89
Yeah, I've had a few jobs I hated but most of them I didn't mind and several I really liked. But I still want time away -- doing the same thing all the time just isn't healthy.
LB, I'm with you on the how-old-do-kids-need-to-be-to-go-out-alone thing. I left PK at home alone for an hour! yesterday b/c I had a doctor's appointment and no car and he was still sick and I didn't want to drag his sick ass on a bike to the doctor's office. He managed not to die. I feel a new freedom knowing that I can run short errands without him now.
90: I have to agree. Seriously erodes quality of life, for you and the kids, and impacts the learning of competencies, as leB said. Is he ambivalent about living in NYC?
Hello, nurse!
I'd take plurality voting and a distinguished art history dating back to the Renaissance.
LB's neighborhood is probably safer than many suburbs for a child to go to the store alone in, given the number of people out and about, neighbors and shopkeepers and layabouts. These people generally keep an eye on who's around.
In suburbia part of the problem is that there are no sidewalks; the other part is that everyone's been whipped into a frenzy over rampant child molestation by strangers.
It's not wrong to want to keep your children safe, of course, but quite a lot of the sentiment seems not to stem from that desire, but the desire to be held blameless should anything bad happen.
79: I don't mind doing the business-oriented stuff.
My advisor was telling me of a guy he knew who did a PhD in complit, then went on to be a hugely successful stockbroker (or something). He's well on his way to being a billionaire. He said that his study of literature helped him to understand human nature enough that he could predict whether the market would be driven by fear or greed (the only two options) on a given day.
Once in a discussion of this guy, I said, "Well, we understand the divine nature, so we should be able to do even better." The joke, of course, is that every theologian knows that the divine nature is non-understandable -- but I doubt the people at the stock exchange would know that.
Still, I'm going to hope for a halfway-decent academic job before the finance-capital route.
I agree with 98 except that "rampant child molestation by strangers" s/b "TV news"
the other part is that everyone's been whipped into a frenzy over rampant child molestation by strangers.
That's too true. When I was a kid I was left to myself, but if I was out of line any passing adult felt OK about stepping in and doing something about it. Now you get odd looks if you just take a kid who's lost in the supermarket up to the counter.
98: It's this hysteria that is most of the problem. It has no basis in fact, but somehow has overtaken the popular imagination in the last 20 years or so. As a child I lived in one area without sidewalks and we managed fine. Although granted, the no-sidewalks (and the entire design template of most suburbs) is stupid too.
95: Really not ambivalent -- that level of not-letting-kids-out-alone is completely normal, bordering on universal. I can't think of having seen a kid under 13 or 14 outdoors without an attending grownup.
re: 103
Really? wow. Even here, which is getting bad, I still see fairly young kids -- 9 or 10 -- out and about in central Oxford.
It's a tough call with letting the kids out. My mom started leaving me home alone when I was around five, and I was allowed to go out and play and wander around pretty much whenever, and there were a bunch of kids that I hung out with. However, around second or third grade, one of the girls that hung out with us did get molested by a stranger who had befriended the whole gang. When the stakes are so high, people will err on the side of caution, and I think there are more weirdos in the world than you suspect.
Has there ever been a scare about parents molesting their own children? Because that would seem to be way more common. Maybe we shouldn't be letting kids stay in their own house.
Many people confused me by talking about Bowling for Columbine as if it were primarily about guns. I thought it obvious that it was primarily about media-driven fear, of exactly the kind we're talking about here. Killer Bees!
re: 105
Personally I think that kids are being damaged by the lack of independence, the fear, and all the rest. The actual number of kids molested, kidnapped or murdered by strangers is vanishingly small. Really.
Very disheartening. I got to walk home from school all by myself starting at 10, and I'm sure my parents would have been happy to start me doing it with friends earlier if I'd had any friends. Western Europe seems a far nicer place to be a kid, as well as to have a kid--but as people have been saying, that freedom really goes along with the sense that you're expected to do some looking after and disciplining kids that aren't yours, as well as being down with having other people do the same with your own kids. In an awful lots of places in the US, that is just not OK these days.
FWIW the last time this topic came up on another thread (here or on CT) I looked up the numbers. Child murder and kidnap in the UK is statistically no more likely now than it was at any point in the past.
I was in third grade living in Manhattan Beach during the McMartin preschool collective freakout, and I'm so glad my parents didn't buy into it. I very clearly remember the constant and unending stream of Molester stuff at school though. Say NO then GO and TELL SOMEONE! And never-ever-ever walk home alone, even in the bourgie close-packed beach community, lest Chester get you.
Also, fwiw, I started walking home from school around age 5.
I walked home alone since -- I think -- first grade, and I was never once raped or even mildly molested. The biggest problem was that some of the people in the neighborhood had really big dogs that scared me, but they were invariably chained up.
105: I sucks about the girl in your neighborhood. But the statistics really dont' support your generalizing that at all. If a kid is killed or molested, it is far, far more likely to be family member or trusted friend than anyone else.
Even just from health issues alone, I'd hazard a guess that childhood disease brought on or excarbated by inactivity due to being cooped up all the time has killed far more kids than random crazies ever will. Of course, I can't back that up with numbers; It isn't like this current approach to parenting doesn't have deep implications to the social & physical health of children.
110: I believe that is the same in the US, but would have to look up current numbers.
Siestas. We need to borrow siestas.
Also we need to get rid of the "I'd resent my coworkers who have lives outside of work" attitude.
I can clearly remember the pride I felt starting my first walk home by myself, in Grade 1. I felt like such a person. I can remember sticking my hands in my back pockets and unzipping my windbreaker a bit.
Yes, the child-molestation-paranoia thing is somewhat overwrought. And from what I've read, kids are actually safer if they're allowed to learn independence and talking back than if they're taught to depend on grownups.
On the other hand, the "parents really ought to blah blah blah" thing is partly responsible for the importance of parental oversight. It's a Catch-22.
"I'd resent my coworkers who have lives outside of work"
Life outside of work is a great thing, or, rather, having multiple sides to your life, one of which pays you and thus gets the bulk of your time. It's the vacations at critical times that make other people's lives hell that cause resentment.
119: Hypothesis: If we weren't so addicted to downsizing, there'd be enough people on staff that vacations and illness wouldn't make other people's lives hell.
In other words, it's the management, not your coworkers, that are the problem. As for me, I'd resent a coworker who made *my* life hell by being an asshole about my vacation time.
Also, one of which pays you and thus gets the bulk of your time.
Really? Again, once you have kids--as most adults do--you might rethink this assumption.
Although, you know, even without kids there's such a thing as life-sustaining activities (eating, sleeping), which one hopes take the bulk of your time, rather than working for pay.
Sorry, 120 Yeah, I meant.
Fuck
LB, maybe next year you can broach the subject.
my then-8 year old brother & our 8 year old neighbor/friend walked me home from kindergarten every day when i was 4-5 - so, just about your kids' age. my brother liked it because he got to tell me what to do. i loved it because i was a giant tag-along. also it was the most adventurous time of the day, even though we only came straight home every time, 3-4 blocks. i think we would have felt like giant idiots if our parents had insisted on accompanying us.
it was an urban suburb - DC area. we only lived there 1 year but had no problems at that age learning the route, not getting lost.
I lived a lot farther than 3-4 blocks from my elementary school. That's a nice luxury!
I wholeheartedly agree with m. leblanc's 61, especially #3. I too say this as a kid-hater; but my kid-hating is my problem to deal with. It's so much more healthy and sane for families with kids not to have to be confined to the home. You see families in Cairo shopping with their kids at midnight or in restaurants at one a.m.. Places with families milling about after dark also seem safer for those of us walking around alone.
From Canada, I would steal the one-month election "season", and Vachon Passion Flake.
I'll give 120 a strong yeah, too. If you work somewhere busy, it's never a 'good time' to take holiday. But if your organisation isn't equipped to cope with humans taking some time off, it isn't equipped to cope with human workers.
People can easily overestimate how non-American the UK is. We work long hours on the eastern side of the pond, too, for instance - albeit not quite as long as in the US. (But the average UK father works 48 hours per week, according to reliable research, and that's a hell of a lot.) But as far as I've been able to tell since moving over here, there is precious little begrudging of time off, even during exceptionally busy periods. It's a godsend to be able to love your job, but also talk honestly and without shame to your hard-driving boss about how much you each enjoy your time away from the office.
I used to go play outside, more or less unsupervised, when I was like 4.
The Lebanese and a lot of Arabs have this great hand-gesture, palm out and fingers squinched together pointing upwards, which means, "hold on, I know you're there, and I will get to you shortly once I'm done with this thing in front of me I'm concentrating on." Americans could stand to adopt that.
They're also way more relaxed about adult kids living with their parents, which is kind of a mixed blessing, since they can be pretty weird about single women (especially) moving out of their parents' house.
I too say this as a kid-hater; but my kid-hating is my problem to deal with.
Alif, I think I just fell deeply in love with you.
The Lebanese and a lot of Arabs have this great hand-gesture, palm out and fingers squinched together pointing upwards, which means, "hold on, I know you're there, and I will get to you shortly once I'm done with this thing in front of me I'm concentrating on." Americans could stand to adopt that.
I'm pretty sure Americans have an equivalent hand gesture which consists of holding up the index finger as if to say "wait one minute, I need to finish something." It may have once been specific to "I am talking on the phone but I'll be done in a minute", but now it's not just for talking on the phone.
Having universal health care would probably be better anyway.
100: Oh god, 98 should have indicated that the frenzy was media-manufactured, not actual.
105: I'm not saying that there aren't weirdos, just that if I were seriously worried about molestation, I'm going to check with daddy's friend or mommy's new boyfriend. If I'm worried about kidnapping, worry about the ex. Etc. Your friend's story is awful, but she's also an outlier.
There's also levels of molestation. I don't remember actually seeing either one, but there were either one or two flashers at the playground when I was a kid -- net, though, I think the level of supervision necessary to keep that from ever happening would have been worse than seeing a couple of perverts' dicks.
You see families in Cairo shopping with their kids at midnight or in restaurants at one a.m.
No set bedtime = future terrorist.
Mm, dunno about 133. Then again, surely the presence of a parent or two at a playground--and/or a broader sense of social responsibility towards children, i.e., if I'm not a mom but I see some creepy guy lurking in the bushes near a playground, I chase him off and alert someone to his presence--would help prevent at least *that* sort of thing.
134: That's why I've made sure that PK knows your phone #.
133: Exactly. It isn't like the insticnt behind the paranoia is a bad one; after all most people are actinga out of a belief that they are proctecting their kids. Hard to argue with that. The problem is, they protecting them from a very plausible threat, and they are causing harm by doing it. It's the net result that's important, as you note. And I'm fairly convinced the net result is strongly negative here.
Well, there's prevent, and then there's prevent totally, which means keeping kids indoors away from all non-screened adults. Certainly, civic minded people should call the cops on flashers, and so forth -- I'm just saying that the fact that I saw a flasher as a kid doesn't mean to me that I was insufficiently well protected.
Although, you know, even without kids there's such a thing as life-sustaining activities (eating, sleeping), which one hopes take the bulk of your time, rather than working for pay.
I probably spend more time working than sleeping and eating. Do I spend more time "not working" than "working"? Obviously.
Again, once you have kids...you might rethink this assumption.
One (and/or one's partner) must (obviously) obtain money for food and shelter and booze and dates and trips to Iceland and children. It helps for one (and/or one's partner) to be careerist, so as to ensure future money for all those things. Both of these involve me (and/or my partner) spending approximately half my waking hours involved in a job.
These don't seem like assumptions I'd care to rethink, especially when I have kids, except for, uh, the booze?
Re: vacations, I don't agree that it's all management's fault. In most jobs, there are times of the year when it's massively inconvenient to take vacation-time-for-pleasure, regardless of management.
--as most adults do--
Hey!
138 to 134, and I agree with 137.
I was blown away (when I first moved to the Big City) by the fraction of women I was acquainted with who had seen cock on the subway. Like, most. I felt very naive then.
138: Yes.
139: Yeah, people need to work to make money for themselves and their families. Note the prioritizing here: the work is for the money is for the families. Not the other way round.
Cue Harry Chapin in the background, riiight...aboooout...now.
Oh, man. About two weeks after I went back to work after Sally, still breastfeeding, I was reviewing documents at 2am in a conference room and "Cat's in the Cradle" came on the radio. I nearly called the station and asked them what the hell they were thinking before I realized that would have been insane.
I've heard it played at a wedding, which was just confusing.
Children are the meringues and eclairs of this culture.
Is a fantastic, utterly fantastic line.
Woo-hoo! Look at the recent comments now, muthafuckas!
139: It does depend on the industry, and I'm not surprised that there are bad times of the year to take vacations in some fields and not others. Working for a tax or accountancy firm? Guess what? You're not taking a vacation in March. Come April 16th, though, the office will be empty.
Oh man, that was awesome, assClown. But now it's over.
I was briefly the Good, the Bad and the Worldly. Quickly eclipsed by Scott-related business though.
In most jobs, there are times of the year when it's massively inconvenient to take vacation-time-for-pleasure, regardless of management.
As opposed to vacation-time-for-unhappiness? You might as well say it's inconvenient for employees to draw salaries. They do: it's in their contracts. As are holidays. Part of the deal.
I went to school by myself (10 minutes on the train) from when I was 8 or 9, usually with my younger brother or another girl I knew. Got flashed at on the train when I was about 10 or 11 - my mum took me to make a statement at the police station, and I don't know what was going on in her mind, but there was never any question in my mind that I should stop going on the train!
And as for not wanting to take a decent amount of holiday? That's fucking idiotic. Why wouldn't anyone want to have a good holiday? Our last *long* holiday was 2003, when we had 3 weeks camping in France. This year we're spending 4 weeks near Toronto over Christmas. The rest of the time even 6+ weeks just disappears very easily in a week here, a few days there. Why the fuck wouldn't anyone need a break? I would hate to be working, but my partner loves his job, and is mostly tied to university termtimes, and has to make sure months in advance that his holiday time doesn't clash with important meetings or his colleagues' holidays. It's not difficult.
And I am fortunate (ha) in that we live in a pretty rough area, and so kids out on the street is usual, there aren't too many paranoid middle-classes around to tut at them. There's a shop on the corner of our road, about 60 metres away I guess. When we moved here, my 3 3/4 year old asked how old she would have to be to go to the shop by herself - I said 6, and made it to about 5 1/2. She's 10 now, and I really have no worries about her going anywhere.
And I leave them at home too - I leave the 10 year old and the 8 year old alone with no problem, and I've left the younger ones if the 10 year old's there. I won't leave the 8 year old as the oldest one at home with younger ones there, as imo she's not ready for that - she's still to likely to lose her temper with them. I'd leave my 6 year old alone if he were happy for that to happen, but so far he's not - but I would certainly trust him, as he's exceptionally cautious. It's like a lot of things - the first time is the worst, and then you realise it's really not a big deal.