A public record of some of my thoughts. Feel free to comment, but don't expect me to respond.
Have you tried buying a brake light recently?
It used to be so easy. There was a little book at the end of the aisle where you could look up which bulb to use for your car.
Now you have to stand in line and wait for someone with minimal computer skills to look it up in a complicated system, or try to find a usable website to answer your simple question. It’s very annoying. The book was way better.
I say yes, that is one of the essential functions of a healthy society. I think Billy Porter disagrees with me.
Obviously there has to be room for the oddball, the nonconformist, and the unconventional. But I don’t see that as being in conflict with the more general rule that convention is useful, and people should be steered towards it.
Convention is what makes us feel comfortable in the world.
If you’re sitting in a theater, and everyone is facing the screen, except the guy in front of you, who has turned around in his seat and is staring at you, that makes you feel uncomfortable. Conventions are what makes for a polite and harmonious society.
One of those conventions is that men don’t wear dresses.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a man wearing a dress. Just as there’s nothing inherently wrong with someone turning around the wrong way in a theater. But respect for other people requires us to obey certain conventions, and efforts to brainwash children against that idea are more than misguided.
Porter said, “As a man, I really want to make a different kind of statement and show up in a way that could also be transformative, that could also be political.”
Fine. Be cutting edge at the Oscars. That’s where all that weird stuff is supposed to happen, because it’s basically a circus.
But when it comes to raising children, we want to teach them the conventions. If they want to be weird when they grow up, that’s their business. But they need to learn normal first.
What do you do if you’re president of the United States and some group of wackos offers to pray for you?
I’ve seen several stories like this over the years, where the media attempts to tar some politician because a group with fringe beliefs offers to pray for him.
What would you do in that situation?
The boys review Family Drama, an imperial pilsner from Flying Dog.
While they enjoy the excellent beer, they review some examples where the media completely fell off the rails and got it horribly wrong.
The media follows an agenda first, story second methodology, and it has come out rather famously in several cases. If they can twist a story to fit their agenda, they’re as happy as clams.
Pigweed and Crowhill drink and review Troeg’s Nugget Nectar, a hopped up, 7.5% amber-ish beer, then discuss the pros and cons of electric vehicles.
The big push for electric cars is the drive toward zero emissions. But are electric cars zero emissions?
Simply making the car produces emissions. Especially the battery. And the energy you use to charge the thing is often from a coal-fired plant.
The boys love electric cars, but we’d like people to be honest about it.