She Looks Like a "Susie" to Me...

I just learned that you can hire an expert to help you name your baby: The Science Behind Being a Baby Namer

No, this doesn't rise to the level of many of the topics I cover here, but I do think it's a sign of the deteriorating times. Are we that detached from our own children and how we see them that we need outsiders to come up with the trendiest name for them? (and the pros say it IS trendy we're looking for, not unique) Do people who have the talent and creativity to compile all that data and discern trends really have nothing more beneficial to do with their time? Is this really the kind of thing we, as a society, want to put a monetary value on?

Yes, it's a trivial complaint...but the trivial adds up. Anyone remember Brave New World?

So It Begins

This American-born truck driver was handcuffed and detained after weigh-station officials decided that his commercial driver's license and social security number weren't adequate proof of citizenship. Only after his wife left work, picked up his birth certificate and delivered it to officials was he released to go on about doing his job. Good thing he had someone at home to call, and that he knew exactly where his paperwork was. If you don't, maybe you'd better get a copy to start carrying with you now.

Too Stupid to Spam?

Comment spam is a given in the blogging world, but sometimes it's more blatant than others, and sometimes it's just so flat-out stupid that it's more entertaining than annoying.

About a month ago, a friend and I started a new dating and relationship blog. Of course, online dating is an area ripe for spam, and so we started getting hit almost immediately--so soon that I wasn't sure how they were finding us. One of the places we were getting consistent spam from was called University Love Connection, and it always said the same thing: "This is a great blog, we are going to add it to out free online dating internet and college information blog www.universityloveconnection.com/blog so our visitors can read your news, as you are a reputable source. Thanks online dating" (With a couple of live links, of course--I've stripped them out here not so much to discourage spam as to discourage stupidity)

I initially thought it was all coming from the same person, but I soon learned otherwise: apparently the Director of Comment Spam for the site sends out instructions. But apparently their hiring criteria are pretty lax, because yesterday we received this comment:

Here is the post to Make on every one : This is a great blog, we are going to add it to out free online dating internet and college information blog www.universityloveconnection.com/blog so our visitors can read your news, as you are a reputable source. Thanks online dating

Cutting and pasting, apparently, is an art too sophisticated for some.

Book Burning for the 21st Century (and beyond)

Book burning--book banning--is generally viewed as a harbinger of evil in our society, past and present. Whether it's an historical account or an imagined future world, most of us shudder at the thought of a society in which information and ideas are torn from our hands, in which the thoughts of the past or the facts of history or daring newborn ideas are concealed from us.

Even in the direst of futuristic visions, books were forcibly removed, destroyed, forbidden. In the real world, we're giving them away.

This thought has been playing in the back of my mind for some time, but it bubbled to the surface this past week when Amazon deleted copies of two George Orwell novels previously purchased by Kindle owners across the United States. Sure, Amazon had a reason for deleting the "books". Sure, Amazon said it would never do it again. But isn't the real issue that they were ABLE?

I've resisted the move toward readers like Kindle for a reason entirely unrelated to the future of our society: I love books. I like the look and feel of them. I like to hold them in my hands. I like the texture of paper and to watch the size of the chunk of pages behind the bookmark diminish as I work my way through a novel. I simply don't WANT to read a digital copy. But there's another, much more significant reason to resist that move--one that unfortunately seems not to have occurred to most of those on board with the "progress" that is a shift toward electronic books.

Imagine that today, some powerful entity decided to do away with the ideas set forth in George Orwell's 1984. Eradicating the novel would be a huge, probably insurmountable job. Physical copies exist in huge numbers, in multiple languages, in countries around the world. And, of course, no one really knows who has all those books...and if we did know, it wouldn't be especially useful information because a book can be easily hidden or handed off. Books are resold, donated, and recycled every day. Some are undoubtedly thrown away; others are destroyed inadvertantly. Even if we knew who had purchased every single copy of the book ever printed--which we don't--that wouldn't mean we knew where they were now, or even how many still existed.

In short, eradicating an existing book in print (particularly a popular one) would be virtually impossible.

Eradicating the Kindle copies of two well-known novels was apparently relatively quick and easy. Today, that's an inconvenience, an outrage to some, a bad move in customer relations terms. But today, Kindle is just beginning to take root. Today, most of us still have the books we treasure safe on our shelves at home, and it would be difficult for someone to make them disappear.

20 or 30 or 40 years from now, when we've all "caught up with the times" and there aren't any of those clunky, old-fashioned paper books lying around, will someone make all of our "books"--all of our history and information and ideas--disappear with the click of whatever has replaced the mouse in that future-world?

Should Satan Have a Gun License?

Women Scorned - Maybe It's Time We Started Showing Them Some Respect

Earlier this week, Eugene Robinson started out an Op-Ed piece by pointing out that "at least" Governor Mark Sanford faced the music alone--meaning that Sanford didn't drag his poor victimized wife out and force her to stand by his side while he came clean.

Where, oh where, is that "/sarcasm" tag when you really need it?

Others, including former President Bill Clinton and former New York Governer Eliot Spitzer, have been accompanied by their wives when they made public disclosures about their infidelities. Notice what I said there? Pay close attention now, because the language is important: have been accompanied by their wives.

What I didn't say, in case you missed the distinction, was "brought their wives along" or "dragged their wives with them" or any of the other things I've seen again and again in news reports, opinion pieces, and even heard in real life discussion. Here's why: I have enough respect for these women to believe that as adults who are often also educated women and parents, they have the power to make their own decisions.

Quick show of hands: Who sees Hillary Clinton as a victim type, easily manipulated by men into doing things she doesn't want to do?

That's what I thought.

Writer after writer has lamented the fact that these men "bring their wives" along with them to make these disclosures, exposing them to public humiliation and such. And every time, I'm struck by the same thought--as an educated, professional woman, I would be far more "humiliated" at thought that the entire country believed me incapable of making my own decision about whether or not to stand by my husband's side than by the fact that people knew he'd had an affair.

Yes, infidelity and dishonesty are wrong. Yes, it's unfortunate that these women are forced to make hard choices and endure tough circumstances based on situations that may not have been in any way of their own making. But are we really improving that situation by disrespecting the choices they do make, by suggesting that they're mindless puppets subjected to whatever course of action their cheating husbands choose?

I Just Don't Give a Crap About Marijuana Legalization

Really. Not one little bit. I'm not for it. I'm not against it. I'm not worried about it. It just doesn't have my attention. What does have my attention, though, is the level of attention it's getting from other people, and the apparent misconceptions that drive a lot of that attention.

First, let me say that what I'm about to say does not apply to medical marijuana issues. I get why that's an issue some people feel needs to be at the forefront of national attention--particularly with some states having legalized medical marijuana use, only to have their citizens arrested by federal authorities. But the medical marijuana issue is a much narrower one, and one that's fundamentally different from the larger issue.

It's fundamentally different because people who are using marijuana for non-medical reasons are free to stop. Am I saying that they should stop? Nope. I couldn't care less, so long as they're not driving around impaired or operating machinery or any of the things that might be dangerous to the rest of us. Just don't care. But here's the thing--the right to use marijuana (non-medically) is just NOT IMPORTANT. The economy is collapsing. Millions of people are losing their homes. People are dying in Iraq. And somehow "But I really wanna get high NOW" just doesn't resonate with me.

Proponents of legalization will point out (and rightly so) that we waste a lot of money prosecuting and jailing people for marijuana crimes. That deserves a look, but it's hardly the most pressing issue on our plates. The other major argument is that lives are being destroyed over marijuana charges..and it's true. As a former criminal defense lawyer, I can definitely attest to the fact that jail time usually does more harm than good. It' s a tragedy, for sure, when a young man with a family and a good job ends up in prison because he had a small amount of marijuana in his care.

But he has a choice. Until this issue is resolved, every single American is absolutely free to just NOT POSSESS MARIJUANA. Should he have to make that choice? Well, that's up for debate. But as of today, the law is what it is, and everyone knows what it is. And so anyone who doesn't want to risk going to prison can decide not to take that chance. That sort of undermines the sense of urgency in my mind. No one is at risk who doesn't choose to take that risk.

But let's say for a moment that it is a pressing issue, that we should set aside foreclosures and the death count in Iraq and get focused on making America safe for people who opt to use marijuana. If that's the goal, then let's get sensible about it.

First, let's consider the fact that the federal law against possession of marijuana was enacted by Congress--it's not an executive order. The President could, of course, encourage Congress to pass such a bill, but that's it; it's their purview, not his. And then if Congress DID pass such a bill, and the President signed it, the problem would be all solved...except that there would still be dozens and dozens of state laws criminalizing marijuana use--laws the President is ABSOLUTELY POWERLESS to affect. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, state and local prosecutions make up 99% of all marijuana prosecutions.

So...let's recap. An apparently huge movement within the United States wants the President of the United States to make it his priority to tackle something that's Congress's job, in order to repeal a law that will impact 1% of marijuana prosecutions across the country.

I've been hearing a lot of buzz about how disappointed people are in Obama over this issue. Seems to me that if all of those people got out there and rallied and donated money and campaigned to get Obama elected so that he could get the federal prohibition on marijuana repealed, the disappointment should be running the other way.