He's stupid. I like that in a politician.

Next up: the Mayor of San Francisco.

The bees like the pretty lady:

https://twitter.com/Brittany_207/status/1370489519565369353

"Supposably" and "embiggen" have been added to the lexicon at dictionary.com.

The fact that my auto spell check on Safari did not highlight "supposably" as a possible error irks me.

I'd rather of, indubitably… It's a Doggy Dog world.

Whoopsi-doopsy! I meant undoubtibly. Those German words are always difficult to sort out.

Something something Intrasexual Competition something something:

https://twitter.com/FlorioGina/status/1370718527024431106

This is almost certainly a fully-scripted skit with actors, but it flatters my priors… Her nasal, provincial, needy tone of voice is like the moist breeze of springtime after a cleansing morning rain.

I'm all for legalizing weed mainly on libertarian grounds, and I recognize that the rhetoric used by Gov. Ricketts is way overblown.

At the same time I am convinced that 1) smoking any kinds of burning organic material is a terrible idea for your overall health esp. lungs, and 2) MJ use in young people is also a terrible idea. Our son got high with friends while in high school (probably still does to some extent) but he simply didn't have that many chances to do so, and so if for no other reason, it didn't become a daily thing. He admitted us that he could see that the people in his high school who smoked regularly went downhill fast. Full legalization is going to increase the number of young people who use, to some extent, to some degree of harm to their physical and mental development.

Like RigelDog I support legalizing weed while also recognizing the harm it causes. There are some estimates that 50% of Americans have used weed and the best I can tell those estimates are correct. I disagree with RigelDog that legalization will lead to increased usage. So many are already using that demand appears to be saturated to me. Interdiction has completely failed. Though as Colorado has shown you will see more usage in public once people don't think they need to hide their habits.

I also find it interesting that in my experience people recover pretty well from mamajuana. No question it makes you lazy and stupid while you take it. But people seem to make a much better recovery from it than they do from most illegal drugs. Coke users always seem to have anger issues even after they stop taking. And some memory issues too. Former amphetamine users tend to stare off into space or show other monofocus issues. By comparison weed users seem to return to functioning people once they stop using. They still lost the years they were drugged though.

Call it a hunch, but I suspect that many of the teens who ABUSE drugs as opposed to using them once in a while would be failures anyway. Grades can be just as easily ruined by skateboarding or too much TV. I.e., goofing off. (I knew a woman, born in WWI, who simply preferred fun to work and so got kicked out of a well-known university.)

Besides, there was a semi-famous study in the late 1980s or early 1990s that said, in effect, that telling kids "just say no" doesn't really help, because drug abusers were never going to listen anyway; social wallflowers were too timid to try drugs at all, and teens in the middle had enough self-respect not to be reckless in their use of drugs, so they didn't get hurt. (It's probably listed under "drug abuse hysteria," unless there are two studies.)

Maybe pot abusers wouldn't be so desperate to avoid growing up if we gave a lot more respect to blue-collar trades and made it clear that it's perfectly OK not to go to college, per se. Just so long as one is willing to move out - and stay out - of one's parents' house, whenever the parents give the word.

Lenona, it might be said that you're a firm believer in the perfectability of society. Is one way it could be worded.

One can't make the world better by giving up.

Besides, I only said "maybe."

(When I see so many supposedly well-educated parents behaving like sheep and letting their kids run the roost in ways that would never have been tolerated before the 1960s, I'm not very optimistic. Not to mention that that rude behavior is trickling upwards, as with cell-phone use at lunches.)

On the other hand, 40 years ago, people were likely laughing themselves sick at the idea that dog owners would willingly clean up after their dogs even when they'd have to walk for blocks to find a wastebasket. How things change.

Forgot to say:

Happy 100th birthday, Al Jaffee.

(The WaPo has an article, and 15 years ago, Steven Colbert had a special cake made for him. Plus, there's a 2010 interview of Jaffee, from the pages of Mother Jones.)

Not that this is important or anything, just wanted to brag. My cousin won 58k worth of prizes on Friday’s Wheel of Fortune show.

> One can't make the world
> better by giving up.

Depends on one's methods and intentions. Our planet has been incalculably enriched by compelling many enthusiasts to throw in the towel.

Academe and runaway accreditation are serious faults in our culture. I want the specifics of your program before authorizing corrective action.

Where did you get the idea that I was talking about how to improve universities, since I was referring to people who probably shouldn't be going there in the first place?

At the same time, anyone who WANTS higher education at least deserves the chance to pursue it. (That's "pursue," not necessarily "get," of course.) Louis Braille decided at age 12 to create an efficient writing system for the blind, even though he knew perfectly well that adults had been trying and failing for centuries. And it took him three sleepless years, with plenty of discouragement from his own classmates.

Not to mention that there have always been six-year-olds who hate work and demand to drop out of school, but obviously, adults don't let them do THAT.

As Miss Manners famously said: "When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can't live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed." (She wasn't talking about education, mind you.)

"Call it a hunch, but I suspect that many of the teens who ABUSE drugs as opposed to using them once in a while would be failures anyway." ~Lenona

That has been my experience as well. A lot of illegal drug abuse is palliative in nature. And especially so for pot. Unfortunately we have no bandages for hurt feelings.

That said the drugs do make things worse. They feel better but are measurably worse.

> Where did you get the idea that
> I was talking about how to
> improve universities

I didn't say you were "talking about how to improve universities," I said you ought to describe exactly what you intend to do regarding academe and accreditation.

This happens a lot with you. You make intimations of sweeping change for cultural patterns — e.g. "making it clear that it's perfectly OK not to go to college, per se."

And then when asked what specific consequences come from words like "making" and "per se," you blush coquettishly and say, 'Hmmmm? Little ol' me? Oh, I would never INTRUDE....'

You're hiding brass knuckles under that nosegay.

I didn't say you were "talking about how to improve universities," I said you ought to describe exactly what you intend to do regarding academe and accreditation.
_______________________________

Call me ignorant, but what's the difference?

Just to clarify something else - I was suggesting that parents would be a lot HAPPIER in the long run if they said something like this to their teens - and then Backed It Up:

"If you don't EVER want to go to any kind of school after high school, you will have to move out immediately, get a job, and never ask me for money again. See? No matter what you choose in life, you'll have to get great grades to convince SOMEONE you're a real worker. So, get going."

Here's where I posted that - it includes a couple of links to articles on people who managed to think outside the box:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2019/03/college-isnt-fo.html

Plus articles on doctors who have successfully reinvented the use of leeches, believe it or not!

"If you don't EVER want to go to any kind of school after high school, you will have to move out immediately, get a job, and never ask me for money again. See? No matter what you choose in life, you'll have to get great grades to convince SOMEONE you're a real worker. So, get going."

Fortunately most parents love their children, and have no desire to operate their family like some sort of *tough love boot camp*

There are many better ways to deal with children than ultimatums.

Isab, that's why I said "something like."

Many parents don't have to say a word to make it clear, firmly, that kids who don't move out after finishing college, trade school or high school will never be acceptable in their home. Others do have to say something, and more than once, so they won't have to invoke the eviction law later. (Clearly, that would be much more painful.)

Otherwise, they'd find themselves living indefinitely with slacker adults who don't really want full-time jobs and don't care how it makes them look to their enterprising peers. As in the comic strip "Dustin." Strips like that don't come from a vacuum - and it's clear in the strip that the parents never thought they'd be living that way, because it's not part of any long-running culture in their family. (Not to mention that a strip like that likely wouldn't have done well half a century ago, because most readers wouldn't have found it that plausible or funny.)

That is, it doesn't occur to many real-life parents that their kids just might grow up to be self-spoiled and shameless when there's no clear parental push in the other direction. (In theory, kids CAN'T spoil themselves, but watching too much TV can plant the seed of entitlement, big-time. "Why don't WE live in a big house like that?")

And then there are those parents who aren't loving but aren't consistent either. Take the fictional U.K. parents in the Adrian Mole Diaries. The mother says to her son at one point: "Look, Adrian, when are you leaving; we want to rent your room."

I mean, why didn't she and hubby just tell him beforehand that he'd have to start paying a serious amount of rent once he finished school? It would have been a more gentle push, after all.

“Many parents don't have to say a word to make it clear, firmly, that kids who don't move out after finishing college, trade school or high school will never be acceptable in their home. Others do have to say something, and more than once, so they won't have to invoke the eviction law later. (Clearly, that would be much more painful.)”

Why would I want to be so rigid and authoritarian to threaten my children with shunning if they didn’t chose a career path that I approved of?

We have a family unit that includes parents children and their spouses. Especially as you age, it is great to have a responsible and caring younger person in the home. I’m not going to die here alone, with the cats snacking on me, the way some poor elderly people do.
If you have no close and loving relatives, your life must be bleak, or it soon will be when you get old enough to worry about breaking your leg changing a lightbulb.

No wonder you cling to all these rules, about what everyone should do.

Why would I want to be so rigid and authoritarian to threaten my children with shunning if they didn’t chose a career path that I approved of?
_________________________________

I didn't say anything like that. Staying home Against the Parents' Will and/or refusing to pay rent, and/or never learning how to become financially independent - is not a valid career path, and you know it.

Parents who LIKE having their adult children around - especially children who actually make themselves useful and/or pay their share - are a different story, obviously. That naturally includes those families with a long tradition of having multiple generations live together.

(As it happens, Miss Manners once said, in effect, that in the multi-ethnic U.S., it's ridiculous to talk as though parents and adult children couldn't possibly be happy sharing a house - as if parents and children were supposed to despise each other.)

As I implied at 11:26, the fictional parents in "Dustin" let him stay there, not because they ever wanted or expected that to happen (and no, he's not helpful to them and won't hold a job), but because they lack the spine to order him to come up with ANY kind of plan for moving out. Or even to pay rent.

As I implied at 11:26, the fictional parents in "Dustin" let him stay there, not because they ever wanted or expected that to happen (and no, he's not helpful to them and won't hold a job), but because they lack the spine to order him to come up with ANY kind of plan for moving out. Or even to pay rent.

Lenona at March 16, 2021 5:08 PM

The question always remains as to why you are so passionate about how other people run their families.

Spineless people allow themselves to be bullied. Not just by their kids.

You want these kids to be *punished* even the fictitious ones, though you derive no benefit at all from whipping them into line.

"The question always remains..."
_____________________________________

I've already answered that over the years. More than once.

Quite simply, I don't want to be surrounded by 10-year-old hoodlums when I'm 80. (I already had one such frightening experience with that age group, 30 years ago or more. Luckily, the outer glass door at the place where I worked was locked for the night and they couldn't get in. Plus, plenty of people will tell you they get scared whenever they encounter groups of loud, unsupervised teens or younger people - especially in relatively confined spaces like the subway. I certainly do - which is one reason, pre-pandemic, I avoided the subway in mid-afternoon, when there were likely to be large numbers of teens.)

Lots of parents manage to keep their kids out of trouble by enrolling them in activities. Those who can't afford to do that clearly need to teach them about resisting peer pressure, since we've all heard of "good" kids who break the law when they're in packs, because they're afraid of being unpopular. But, as educator Rosalind Wiseman pointed out in her books, it's not enough to teach kids what the rules are, since any child knows that stealing, etc., is illegal; kids have to be truly afraid of what the PARENTAL consequences will be. If they aren't, why would they be afraid of the police as they get older?

Besides, what sense does it make to condemn badly behaved adults, as pretty much everyone here does, without criticizing how they were raised? If we don't want more government interference in people's private lives - as I'm sure you don't - parents need to grow up and govern their own families better.

(That would also cut down on complaints - and angry threats - from neighbors and relatives as well.)

It's been said that before the 1970s or so, when kids behaved badly at school or behind the parents' backs, parents didn't take it personally, since they knew that kids have free will. They just listened to the teacher and lowered the boom on their kids, except when the teacher was truly a nutcase. Nowadays, however, the common reaction, when an adult makes a complaint, is for the parent to react as though the complaint is either a lie or an attack on the PARENT. This is unreasonable.