by turns

I'm just saying it happened, not that I'm proud of it

This happened the other day when I was heading to work after lunch. I wasn't in a grumpy mood really. Just kind of came out of nowhere. I was driving behind someone that had a bumper sticker with the name of...a certain president on it. Pretty much unconsciously this little movie started playing. In that movie were scenes of all these things I'd read in the past couple days about this president and his/her friends, things I'd tried to let brush off me since I find national politics, any nation's politics, to be an unending source of frustration and anger if I let it get to me. So all of a sudden I'm faced with these things: approval to drill for oil in Alaska; our funding both sides of a war we're in by our continued reliance on oil; huge tax breaks for the very rich that is allowing other countries to own more and more of our debt (which they're presumably going to call in at some point and where is that money going to come from?); increased spending on the military when things like healthcare, education, and employment are left on the side of the road; brushing off a bilateral study of the No Child Left Behind Act by over a 1000 state legislators who found the Act UNCONSTITUTIONAL and achieving the very opposite of what it's supposed to do; the naming of Wolfowitz to head the World Bank; and decreased environmental standards. All of this was in there but it was a short movie. Kind of like the life of the nation was flashing before my eyes. And on top of this the driver wasn't even going half the speed limit! So the first chance I got, again without thinking about it consciously, I zoomed past her and as I did gave her an angry look. Right after I did it I thought, that was kind of rude. I don't think she saw me though, for which I'm glad.

Now I'm wondering, did I just discover a new phenomena? Perhaps called Political Road Rage? Has this happened to anyone else?

An American Saying

Why is it that you'll see something like, "It takes a village to raise a child--African Saying"? Or, "The Earth is our Mother--Native American Saying"? Never, "Go Ahead, Make My Day- American Saying" (I couldn't think of another saying we have in the States this early in the morning). Or a European Saying? Why are all the many hundreds or thousands of cultures represented within Africa or Native America collapsed into one thing, so that you can have an African or Native saying, but never a "Western Civilization" saying?

Fascinating

From the Pew Charitable Trust site, from a book about global attitude research.

A question for all ya'll.

I've been doing some research and came across this nugget.

"Women who had no children by age 28 and were married by age 32 had the lowest poverty rate and the highest family income. Women who had a child between ages 24 and 28 and were married by age 29 were the happiest and the least likely to be depressed. Men who married but had no children had higher levels of education at age 35, lower poverty rates, higher family incomes, and appear to be happier and less depressed".

Why?