Monthly Archive for November, 2010

Dutch Women Don’t Get Depressed

“Personal choice is key: in the Netherlands people are free to choose their life partners, their religion, their sexuality, we are free to use soft drugs here, we can pretty much say anything we like. The Netherlands is a very free country.” -Ellen de Bruin

So it seems this country is, actually, heaven.

“…the Dutch women…take a lackadaisical approach to their careers. They work half days, meet their friends for coffee at 2 p.m., and pity their male colleagues who are stuck in the office all day.”

That’s according to this article from Slate which GDNAL sent to me.

According to the book I stole the title of this post from,

“68 percent of Dutch women work part time, roughly 25 hours a week, and most probably do not want a full-time job.”

Multiple studies have been done on the Dutch women. The UN thought for awhile that something was preventing Dutch women from fully participating in the economy.  They investigated. The conclusion? (From the NIS News Bulletin)

“Attempts to get more women working full-time are doomed to failure because nobody has a desire for this. Both the women themselves and their partners and employers are satisfied with the Dutch part-time culture for women.”

Published on November 29, 2010 in Dollars and Sense and Feminazism. 0 Comments

Check Mate?

“Read my lips, no new taxes.” -George Bush

GDANL writes a piece focusing on the country’s debt, responding to the midterm election results.  An awful lot of the newly elected Representatives and Senators focused their campaign on the ballooning national debt.  That much, I think, is good.  We do need to talk about the debt.

However, they don’t seem to have any real solutions.  GDNAL discusses the debt and the federal budget much better than I can and sums up his analysis:

“You have basically three choices—you can raise taxes; you can modify all the existing laws that provide benefits to the elderly, health care to the aged and poor children, federal employee and soldier pensions; or you can let the federal government default on its debt, creating total chaos on the worldwide economy.  Your move, guys.”

Think you can do it better? Try the New York Time deficit puzzle, where you can try to solve the deficit problem.  I did.

Published on November 26, 2010 in Dollars and Sense and The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. 0 Comments

Book Club

I’m moving Book Club back until the New Year. With the move and everything, I haven’t even had the chance to think about the book.

On January 28 we will discuss “The Way We Talk Now.” My focus for the New Year is going to be to get people who haven’t, in the past, contributed to do so. In that vein, Heterdoxus will be doing one review.  I’m looking at someone to do another, perhaps someone with an interest in language. Hey, Dark Damien, you interested?

I’ll get the sidebar updated when I get a second.

Published on November 24, 2010 in Book Club. 2 Comments

Rally To Restore Sanity

“To rage and mock is gentlemanly, to grumble and whine is not.” -Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

I know this post is all kinds of late and wrong but I did just make an transcontinental move.

After (and even before) the Rally To Restore Sanity/Fear, I saw a lot of discussion about what the point was. A lot of people commenting on articles about the Rally scoffed at the idea of comedians hosting a rally to mock people.  Even one of my favorite bloggers, PZ Myers, asked what the point was.

“He’s a funny guy, but I’m still completely baffled by Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity.”

How do you respond to Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, Glenn Beck, et al? You can’t have reasonable discourse with them.  You can’t have an intellectual chat with people who can’t name Supreme Court decisions. Who accuse Holocaust survivors of being Nazis. Who think the President may not have been born in the US. Who think the government is secretly trying to access your computer through a website.  Who claim terrorists are registered Democrats.

It’s not all conservatives.  I don’t see Stewart’s rally directed at P.J. O’Rouke or Andrew Sullivan or the CATO Institute or The Weekly Standard or Matt Labash or Christopher Hitchens.  I think it’s directed at a very vocal, very dogmatic, very under-informed minority of people in this country who, like people who believe the Earth is flat, cannot be reasoned with.

So you don’t reason with them.  You mock them.  You poke fun at their ridiculous ideas.  You refuse to take them seriously.  Like this:

Published on November 23, 2010 in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. 0 Comments

Midterms

“Our elections are free–it’s in the results where eventually we pay.” -Bill Stern

“People can sleep better knowing Christine O’Donnell won’t be in the Senate.” -Keith Olbermann

Published on November 3, 2010 in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. 0 Comments

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