A Curious Little Blog

My eldest son, who is 10, has become extremely intereted in professional wrestling.  This is bad for so many reasons.  Even the good guys on wrestling make terrible role models for the most part, especially the constant bragging and trash talk.  Even worse is the false idea of violence that wrestling gives.  I'm not opposed to violence in principle, but I don't want my son to think that you can hit someone over the head repeatedly with a blunt object and he will still be able to get back up a minute later to keep fighting.  I fear that such a false impression might cause someone to do permanent damage under the impression that he is just doing normal wrestling stuff. I also enjoyed professional wrestling when I was 10.  It's understandable at that age.  But when the camera pans around the audience and shows normal-looking adults in the audience, it concerns me.  I'm not sure which is worse:  that they think the fighting is real, or that, th...

One thing I look out for in politics is people saying something that makes no sense.  Okay, people say things that make no sense all the time, but I'm referring to an argument that becomes a stock political weapon in one side's arsenal.  To take an example, there is the idea that prohibiting gay marriage is contrary to the Constitution. I want to make it clear one can make a strong argument in favour of homosexual marriage.  I'm against it, but I see an argument on the other side and I'm willing, even interested, to engage in debate about it.  But for a judge to rule, as Vaughn Walker did recently, that not allowing homosexual marriages is a violation of constitutional rights, is contrary to all reason.  Until recently, no state in America had ever recognized homosexual marriages.  Wouldn't that mean, by Judge Walker's logic, that the entire country has been in violation of the Constitution for the entire history of our nation?  Or at least since the...

Since Democrats frequently accuse Republicans of "hate," I thought it would be appropriate to have a regular feature highlighting examples of Democrats demonstrating hate speech.  The qualifications are that the speech must use the word "hate" or some synonym, resort to non-political name-calling (i.e., calling someone an extreme conservative doesn't count, but calling him a jackass does), or wishing someone dead, injured, or humiliated. The first award goes to Democrat Keith Halloran, a candidate for New Hampshire's state assembly, for saying that he wished Sarah Palin was on board Ted Stevens's plane when it crashed .  To his credit, the state Democratic party leader denounced the comment and called on Halloran to apologize, which he apparently has not done as of this writing.

Since I was in elementary school, I have liked talk radio.  I can remember listening to sports talk radio as my dad drove me to school in 5th grade.  I was disappointed when the station announced that they were going to move to more music and less talk.  I do listen to music in the car sometimes, but I am drawn to talk, which engages me more directly. Unfortunately, there are two major problems with talk radio.  To become a talk show host, and spend hours every day telling people your opinion, you have to have a certain amount of ego.  (Arguably, this is true for blogging as well , but probably not to the same extent.)  Talk show hosts therefore tend to be insufferably self-centered.  I suppose that many people get into news because they, too, like to tell people what they think, but the dynamics aren't the same.  In news, you are basically paid to tell people what happened; you may do so in a very biased fashion, but you can't just...

I went to company headquarters for my new company for orientation today.  Does that mean I got orientated?  No, I got oriented -- for some reason we add an extra -at- to the root word in this case.  Admittedly, "oriention" would sound weird; is that the only reason? I am adopted, and when I was young I used to speak of the "adoptiation agency."  For some reason, it didn't occur to me that I could have said simply "adoption agency"; but why do we add -at- to orient but not adopt?  (Okay, I threw in -iat-, and, again, "adoptation" would not sound nearly as good.) Another word that adds -at- is preventative.  At the oriention this morning, I noticed they used the word "preventive" to describe certain kinds of health care that we employees are eligible for, so I thought maybe preventative was just incorrect, along the lines of adoptiation.  But, no, it appears to be a legitimate alternative , sometimes with a slightly different mean...

People get worked up when music albums have warning labels to indicate their suitability for children (Tipper Gore's crusade), but music gets censored regularly on the radio without comment.  It's not so much whole songs that get left out, but individual verses, or offending lyrics are subtly altered.  I have noticed the following in country music: Garth Brooks, "The Thunder Rolls" -- this song about a woman who shoots her cheating husband is usually only played through two verses, when she finds out about the infidelity but before she shoots him.  I didn't even know there was a third verse for years.  The fact that I have heard the full song on the radio makes me curious about the source of censorship:  do radio stations voluntarily refrain from playing the third verse?  It also interests me because there is no shortage of country songs about killing unfaithful spouses, e.g. "The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia," "Independence Da...