Pierre Bastien

What’s the simplest argument in favor of gay marriage? I believe it’s this: marriage is a basic civil right.

This line actually comes from Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 civil rights case. In overturning a Virgina law criminalizing interracial marriage, the US Supreme Court wrote:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…

Why deny gay people basic civil rights?

The Loving quote brings up one of the common objections to gay marriage, namely that gay marriage is not essential to human survival. I know, I know, gay people can’t procreate. But neither can old people, and we don’t deny them the right to marry. Why single out gay people?

I’m not religious but I know many Americans worry about the religious implications. The Bible doesn’t say anything about gay marriage; it just wasn’t a topic of conversation back in the day. But the Bible does say homosexuality is bad. For example, 1 Cor 6:9-10, which says, “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” But we don’t deny marriage to the sexually immoral (premarital sex!), to idolaters, adulterers, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers or swindlers. Why single out gay people?

I know some people are straight-up homophobic and will do anything to stop gay rights in any form. But I suspect most of the people who are opposed to gay marriage in the US are not virulently homophobic, they are simply unsure what will happen if we mess with the conventional definition of marriage. It’s true, we don’t know what will happen. But we should summon the courage to do what’s right, even in the face of uncertainty.

There are many benefits of blogging. It’s a good way to reinforce what you’ve learned, because by trying to explain what you’ve learned to someone else, you come to understand the thing better yourself. It’s a good way to connect with other people, because part of the fun of blogging is being able to link to other Websites and be linked to in turn. It’s a good way to challenge yourself to try new things, because experimenting on yourself makes for fun blog topics, like breaking up with your clothes.

But sometimes, you just don’t feel like writing. Or rather, you just don’t feel like continuing. This has happened to me at least twice since I started this blog a year and a half ago. So I have some experience in this matter.

Here are some tips on how to keep blogging, after you get stuck:

* Recognize that you are stalled. It may not be immediately obvious to you that your blog has stalled. You keep thinking, “I should post something” but time rolls on and you just aren’t posting. Sort of like that feeling you get when you keep pressing the snooze button. After a while, you don’t even know how much time has passed. If you keep thinking “I should post something” too many days in a row, pause for a second to recognize that something isn’t right.

* Change it up. If you feel a particular topic has gotten stale, try writing about something else. When I stopped my blog the first time, I had been writing about personal development topics. I got going again by switching things up and writing about parenting and home organization, and then drawing cartoons. Just recently, I switched things up by posting a couple articles about the US federal budget. Whoa! Some readers were disappointed. Others wrote in to say they loved the new twist.

The first time I quit my blog, it took me 2 months to realize that I should just switch things up and carry on. The second time I stalled, it took me less than a month before I admitted I was stalled and changed things up. So maybe that means I’m getting better at admitting defeat.

Ultimately, I know that if I don’t change things up regularly, the blog will die. So now you know — this blog may wander a bit, in the interest of survival. Now, watch this video of a Slinky on a treadmill:

Conservatives like to say the national debt has skyrocketed under Obama. A recent political ad shows a graph of “debt under Obama” with a line going up and to the right, traced by a blazing fireball:

The voiceover says Obama’s “started spending like our credit cards have no limit” (it’s 25 seconds into the ad).

So did the national debt rise under Obama? Yes, it sure did. But what really happened (in the spirit of the political ad) is Bush ran up the nation’s credit card debt, and then left the bill for Obama.

Here are some actual numbers, from a CBPP analysis. (See Table 1: 2009, 2012, 2011 and 2012 columns for the detailed spending figures during Obama’s term. This chart is labeled “deficits”. Our national debt is simply an accumulation of our yearly deficits.)

The big contributing factors are:

(1) The recession. The economy started to crash in the last few months of Bush’s administration. Impact on the national debt through reduced tax revenues and increase social safety net spending: $1.7 trillion.

(2) The response to the financial crisis (by Bush) including TARP, Fannie and Freddie bailouts: $179 billion.

(3) The response to the recession (by Obama) including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus package and other recovery measures: $1.2 trillion.

(4) The Bush tax cuts: $1.5 trillion. Of course, Obama actually contributed to this by extending the Bush tax cuts beyond their original expiration date.

(3) The Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: $730 billion

As the CBPP report points out, the best thing we can do for the national debt at this point is let the Bush tax cuts expire when they are scheduled to, after 2012.

I’ve never gotten around to listening to Arcade Fire, but I did stumble onto this cool video by accident.

Clementine Churchill, wife of Winston, pulls some nice judo moves on Almroth Wright.

After reading Sir Almroth Wright’s able and weighty exposition of women as he knows them the question seems no longer to be “Should women have votes?” but “Ought women not to be abolished altogether?”

I have been so much impressed by Sir Almroth Wright’s disquisition, backed as it is by so much scientific and personal experience, that I have come to the conclusion that women should be put a stop to.

If you bring your young kids somewhere, and it comes time to leave and your kids are having fun, how do you get out the door gracefully without upsetting the kids? Some parents give their kids a warning that they’re about to leave in 5 (or whatever number) of minutes, to give the kids a chance to adjust. I’ve tried this too, but never found it to have much of a positive effect.

Here’s what I’ve been doing recently that seems to work better.

1. Don’t warn the kids.

Instead of giving the kids a warning, just tell them when it’s time to start leaving. This might sound a bit abrupt, but it’s really not. There are shoes, coats, etc. to put on. The whole getting-out-the-door process takes a while.

Also, it’s not like children use that five minutes to wrap up any business they have. In fact they tend to just scramble to pull out more toys or games or get into whatever new stuff they want to try before leaving. If you just tell them it’s time to leave, then they don’t have time to get into any new trouble.

You might say this is a bit cruel, to just spring the departure on the kids, but I don’t think so. In a way, giving the kids a warning is cruel — is drives home the message that they must act now! Time is a limited resource! Isn’t it better to just assume there will be a natural transition into the next phase of the day rather than making it into a “big thing”?

2. Hustle them along.

When the kids don’t want to leave yet, I’ve found it’s best to just hustle them along. Once the decision to leave has been made, all energies can and should be directed towards leaving. It’s best not to let this drag out with arguments or negotiations. You sort of just run the kids through the gauntlet of getting socks and shoes and coats and hats and whatevers on and get them out the door. This is more about having focus as a parent on keeping things moving. Make sure you say your own goodbyes before starting this process with the kids, so you can keep the train moving.

Sometimes the kids don’t want to leave, and they start throwing a tantrum. This doesn’t happen all the time, and I haven’t found that warning the children in advance about departure really makes a tantrum any less likely. When a tantrum does happen it’s best not to let things develop into a stand off, where you find yourself saying “if you don’t get your shoes on now, you’re going to get [such-and-such punishment].” I basically just try to ignore any fuss and get ‘em out the door. They’re usually cool once they get moving.

Overall I think the idea of giving people a warning before leaving makes sense for adults, because usually adults have things we want to do before leaving, such as saying goodbye to people or drinking the last of our beer. But kids haven’t really got that 5 minutes of things-to-do-before-we-leave mentality. For kids there are only two states: playing and not playing. I don’t believe the early warning system does much other than to increase stress for the kids (and therefore for the parents too).

I’d be curious if anyone else has tried both approaches and noticed a clear benefit to the kids from providing an early warning. [1]

[1] There may be some benefit to the parents of warning the kids before leaving. It might just be an easy way for parents to announce to the other parents and kids that the family caravan is leaving soon.

The other day, a conservative-leaning friend of mine took a swipe at “welfare”, implying that large numbers of people are not bothering to work during the recession because they are supported by government welfare.

In my mind I equated welfare with Food Stamps (which has since been renamed to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP). That didn’t seem to be connected to what my friend was talking about — people getting cash and not having to work — so my response in the moment was, “I don’t think that’s what welfare is for.”

Later though, I started to look into what welfare actually means. I tried to look up the government’s definition online, but as far as I can tell, welfare isn’t a defined term in any government literature. There’s no “Welfare” category in the 2012 US Federal Budget.

Yet I do remember Bill Clinton promising to “end welfare as we know it”. It turns out that Clinton did sign a law, in 1996, which established the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Under this program, indigent American families — but only those with children — can receive direct cash assistance from the government until they get a job. While they are looking for a job, they must take job-training courses. Families are limited to a maximum of 5 years’ assistance, replacing earlier programs that had no time limit.

In my home state of Pennsylvania, 220,000 people were receiving TANF payments in December 2011, out of a population of roughly 12,700,000 (from July 2011). So roughly 1.7% of the Pennsylvania population is on welfare.

How large are welfare payments? The best chart I could find is this one (see Appendix 1) from 2010. These are monthly figures. Welfare payments in Pennsylvania were $421 a month for a family of three. That works out to $14 a day. Again this is for a family of three.

A minimum wage job pays about $1,160 per month in Pennsylvania if you’re working full-time. So working minimum wage pays almost 3 times as much as being on welfare.

I’m sure there are some people on welfare who could be working. But at $14 a day, it’s not like they’ve found the secret lane.

Update: Whoa! My late night math skills are seriously deficient. Minimum-wage-per-month figures updated.

As I mentioned earlier, Steve Pavlina is writing a series of blog posts teaching people how to create streams of passive income, and I am following along. In his recent post he emphasized the importance of committing fully to the goal of creating passive income.

One of his suggestions was to post your goal where you can see it every day. My goal is:

I am now successfully creating a new stream of passive income by September 30, 2012, that generates at least $300 per month on average and endures for a minimum of 10 years, and I’m doing this in a way that delivers strong value for many others around the world.

I just copied Steve’s goal — I liked the wording — but changed the dollar amount. His goal is $2,000 per month. I picked $300 per month. I chose that number because I’m currently earning about $30 a month in passive income from the Google ads I stuck on my BrickBreaker site. I figure 10 times my previous best is a worthwhile goal.

I printed out my goal and left it on my desk next to where my coffee mug goes. That’s guaranteed to get my attention every day.

I’m also posting the goal here on my blog to solidify my commitment a bit more.

Not too long ago, I rebranded my blog as “The Happy Grownup” and moved it to a new domain. I said at the time that this gave me a new sense of purpose. Well, shortly after moving to the new domain, I stopped writing new material. Oops. So much for a sense of purpose.

One reason I stopped writing new content is I became very involved in another site I publish for squash players. Maybe I had no time / focus left over for The Happy Grownup. Though, that doesn’t seem 100% true, since I’ve continued to post smaller morsels on this pierrebastien.net site in the meantime.

Whatever the real reasons may be, I know I no longer want to have The Happy Grownup as a separate site. If you want to stay subscribed, there’s nothing you need to do — you’ll keep getting the usual updates.

I’ll still be drawing cartoons, but I might also mix in some different types of posts long the way.