I finished Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom. All the relationships in the novel (between lovers, between parents and kids, between siblings, and between friends) were screwed up. People fought, competed, and betrayed each other. People yearned to be free of dysfunctional relationships. Franzen showed how dysfunction was passed down through generations. He described the struggles and […]
Relationships
How much can we tell about a person by how they look?
I tend to think that personality and intelligence manifest in looks. For example, you can see kindness and intelligence and grace in a person’s face. So I ask: Can looks alone reveal a lot about a person? I asked this question on facebook. Chris Tombrello posted a link to the largely discredited idea of physiognomy […]
Making Marriage Last – Do Atheists Do It Better?
Conservative Christians think of themselves as the last line of defense for a time honored and holy tradition, marriage. In the conservative Christian view, marriage is a sacred union ordained by God. It binds one man and woman together so that the “two become one flesh” until they are parted by death. This view of […]
Life Skills 102
Schools sometimes offer “home economics” courses. And there’s the book Life Skills 101: A Practical Guide to Leaving Home and Living on Your Own, which concentrates mostly on financial matters. I suggest a course, for high school seniors, called Life Skills 102. It would cover topics such as: How to deal with stress. How to […]
New Contraceptives for Cascadia
The lesson of St. Louis. Valerie Tarico on March 5, 2013 at 11:11 am This post is 1 in the series: Fifty Times Better than the Pill Photo Credit: Chris JL via Compfight cc Last fall, researchers in Missouri caught the attention of public health experts and advocates across North America. Some 9,000 St. Louis […]
The State is a Condition
“The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another…” Gustav Landauer Have to pack and set up the Really Really Free Market in Olympia. Contracting other relationships, behaving differently toward one another? Can we really destroy […]