Wednesday, November 22, 2006

People who don't like intimacy? schizoid?

Link A NY Times article about a psychotherapist who met a severely introverted man who attempted suicide after being pressured to have a girlfriend by his parents at the age of 35. The doctor believed the man just didn't take well to dealing with people. I can sort of empathize -- I mean people can be trouble, but dealing with them is at least interesting, at best fun and at worst frustrating, still nothing worth doing oneself in over. But I digress, the psychotherapist basically disputes the widely held idea that one should force such people to conform to norms by being more "normally" social. He said what was best for this guy was just to leave him be. Seems sensible to me. Plus, maybe the guy was gay.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Marriage too central?

Link NYTimes piece by a marriage expert says marriage has become too central to definition of a fulfilling life. Too much depends on it, and it becomes a reason to be isolated. Friendships have suffered greatly because of it.

Related post: Marriage takes a back seat

Dems take house and senate; Rumsfeld resigns

Some unexpected good news: Rumsfeld steps down.

And the Dems have taken the majority -- albeit barely -- in the Senate as Virginia is called for Webb!

Times Select / Nov 6-12 free (sort-of)

A lot of the articles which I link to from this blog are from the New York Times. Something pretty annoying about the Times is that some articles get placed into the paid portion of the site called TimesSelect after a short amount of time. Not everyone wants to pay money to access the TimesSelect.

Well, so the poor (my case: cheap) man's solution is to read about the article or read snippets of it (or sometimes major portions of it where people have quoted much of it) on people's blogs using a blog search tool such as blogsearch.google.com . You can do a search based on the title in double quotes -- this looks for the words in the particular order matching the title.

The other solution is to read my postings not long after they get posted, so that the 'free' link is still active to the Times. Usually the free link is active for a minimum of a week.

-- updated 11/3

Link Philips is sponsoring Times Select from Monday Nov 6 through Sunday Nov 12.

Also, it appears that you no longer need to log into the Times to read articles. One less password to remember, and blog links will work for everyone, yay!

-- updated 11/8

It looks like with the free preview, you can only see the Editorials which are under Times Select. You can't see the archived materials. Bummer.

Here's some cool editorials:

Frank Rich on Truthiness overtaking reality in news.
Maureen Dowd on Cheney-Rumsfeld.
Thomas Friedman on how Bush sees Americans as stupid.
Paul Krugman on Bechtel leaving Iraq infrastructure in a mess now that its contract is "complete"
Thomas Friedman on how a good outcome is no longer an option in Iraq
Maureen Dowd on the mother party beats the impotent father party

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Closeted Mark Foley might have many fellow shut-ins

Link The first is pastor Ted Haggard at the evangelical New Life church with 14,000 members. A male escort says he had a business (sexual) relationship with the pastor for 3 years. The pastor has already stepped down and his replacement has said that the pastor admits some of the charges are true. (BBC News story)

Link The second is the Republican candidate for Florida governor Charlie Crist. A convicted felon says he had an ongoing romantic relationship with Crist.

-- updated 11/4

Link Church finds Haggard committed sexually immoral conduct and dismisses him. Not sure if it means they didn't approve of his having an affair or having gay sexual relations.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Human shields killed

Link I read this stuff, and it really is unbelievable. I don't really know that it's unjustified. It's sort of the reasoning the US went into Afghanistan. If you "harbor" (supposedly Dubya came up with the word, but it's impossible he could ever be that smart) terrorists, you can be killed. I guess to the extent that the Israeli military fired on unarmed women it looks bad. But then again, the women were helping Palestinian militants that fired rockets into Israel to escape.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Stop the gay sheep experiments!

Link I agree with Navratilova. Doing experiments on gay sheep to try to make them straight is similar to the electro-shock and hormone therapy of gay humans of decades ago. It didn't work then even when some gays consented to it. And in this case the sheep are not consenting to it. It's homophobic and wrong. Leave the sheep alone!