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Topics - bluegrass

41
Main / Question for the Women
Jun 13, 2007, 01:34 PM
Just out of curiosity:

Are women generally unaware of what their typical windo is for having children until it's too late?

The reason I ask is that I was fooling around looking at Match.com and I seriously can't believe the number of women around 40 who "definitely" want to have kids and very often it's at least two!

So they're single, still have to go through dating, then marriage, then planning the family.  They have almost no reason to believe they're going to be able to do that unless they're completely unaware!
42
Main / Hilarious!
May 07, 2007, 08:56 AM
The onion women's issue!

http://origin.theonion.com/content/
43
Main / 60 Minutes Duke Lacrosse
Apr 15, 2007, 07:54 PM
Anybody see the Duke Lacrosse feature on 60 Minutes tonight?

Two things really stuck out.

What they did say:  "FALSE ACCUSATION"

What they didnt' say:  "Cases like these may have a chilling effect on real rape victims who may be afraid to report it."

The ship really turned on this one.
44
Main / Whatever happened to Galt?
Apr 11, 2007, 11:16 AM
Anybody know?  I checked his profile for recent posts and he appears to be lurking as of 4/8.

Galt?
45
Main / Gender Violence Database Website
Feb 24, 2007, 09:59 AM
A while back I came across a website on global gender violence and I think I came across it through Mens News Daily.  It may be a project by someone like Carey Roberts.  It looks at civil wars and military conflicts.

Does anyone know where that is.  I'd like to bookmark it for future reference.

Thanks.
46
Main / Check this out on youtube
Feb 17, 2007, 06:18 PM
This woman's cool as hell!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usS5vqGYokw

Doc, I think it's getting to be time to put a special youtube section on the site here.
47
Main / Interesting Training at Work
Feb 03, 2007, 10:45 AM
So we had a pretty interesting training where I work recently.  I'm a project manager at my company basically handling cross-functional teams in a technical field.

The training was entitled "Dynamics of Team Membership" and though the description I'm about to give may sound kind of touchy feely, it was actually pretty useful.

In preparation for the training, everyone at my site -- probably around 250 people had to take a web based personality survey designed to reveal what sort of communication style one has in the context of different personality traits.  We all then had to go over our results with everyone in the training group, so the results were widely known after the first day.

The striking thing about the results was that in terms of things like emotional awareness, empathy and holding things like feelings as important as hard data, the majority of those who were more disposed to this manner of thinking were actually men.

In my group of about thirty people only one woman scored with that quality as a chief aspect of her personality.

In reading through some of the descriptions, there were an inordinate amount of women who came out as caring much about the feelings of others and most had descriptions that contained pretty strong language about a desire to control people and outcomes.

48
Main / Borat and feminists
Nov 01, 2006, 09:24 PM
Pretty funny.

Watch how seriously they take themselves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV02xAKM1z8
49
This is happening right near me.

http://www.wnyt.com/x10248.xml?ag=x156&sb=x183

Mom seeking child support arrested for rape

Father was only 13 when child conceived

QUEENSBURY, Oct. 5
By WNYT Staff

Click to view the video

A Warren County mother who tried to get child support ended up getting arrested Thursday.

Twenty-two-year-old Kimberly Baker sued for support for her 3-year-old daughter.

Prosecutors became concerned when they found out father is 16 years old.  That means he was 13 when the child was conceived.

Baker was arraigned Thursday afternoon.  She's currently at Warren County Jail in lieu of $10,000 bail.

Last Updated: Thu Oct 5 13:39:00 EDT 2006
50
Main / Whatever happened to Trish
Sep 28, 2006, 05:41 AM
Her blog seems dead.

Did she finally run out of money to pay for it now that there's no more CS?
51
Main / Important request
Sep 19, 2006, 04:45 PM
About a year and a half ago when the Genia Shockome case first broke, I received a couple of pdf files from the court about the case.

If I sent them to anyone or if anyone has them from another source, please let me know as soon as you can.  I need them for something kind of important.

PM me and I'll give you an email to send them to.

Thanks!
52
Main / Preacher murderer out on bail
Aug 11, 2006, 03:49 AM
Here's the story:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/08/09/minister.slain/index.html

Note how they tell her whole story and hardly mention her husband.

Note how they play the sympathy card and how he was "verbally abusive."
I think most people would become verbally abusive when they find out their spouse just flushed $17,000 down the toilet.

She shot him in the back while he was laying in the bed.

So my quetsions:

1.  Who was it that posted the $750,000 bond?

2.  Who hired her at the dry cleaners?

If I find out that it was members of her church, I may become nauseous.
53
Main / Some thoughts on the education gap
Aug 08, 2006, 05:34 AM
I think the problem is even bigger than people are realizing.

My daughter has just finished three years at a Montessori school; two years of preschool and a year of kindergarten.  During those three years, the girls have vastly outnumbered the boys.  The worst ratio was 10:1 (that's right, 19 girls and two boys), and the best ratio was 2:1.

Last week she just finished up a week long summertime daycamp at a local church.  On Friday they put on a show for all of the parents to close out the camp.  A quick headcount showed a girl to boy ratio of 2:1.  A friend who's a teacher at a local Hebrew school and Jewish community center, and has been for years, says that while it varies, he generally sees a representation of 2:1 girls to boys as well in most of his programs.  Another thing I noticed was that among some of the boys whose families I know, their mothers were volunteers helping to run the camp.

These are all little kids.  They aren't driven by academic interest or hard work, their participation in programs and private schools like these are driven primarily by the efforts of their parents.  

The only person who's come back to me and said that his boys are in classes where there are more boys is in the public elementary school system.

I can't help but come to the conclusion that where education and community involvement are concerned, parents are simply much more highly motivated to get their girls out there than they are their boys.  That is, if it's a private school that might require more effort and economic resources, parents are much more likely to seek them out for their daughters than they are for their sons.  At the Montessori school another thing I note is that a substantial number of the boys who attended over the years had an older sister who went before them.

I started trying to do an internet search to find some stats on gender representation in private schools, but I haven't been able to find anything really - no stats at all I mean.  In my experience in researching these sorts of gender issues, that tells me that likely when I do finally find some relevant stats, they'll confirm my hypothesis.  It's simply been my experience that if statistics do in fact confirm female privilege - especially in female dominated education - the findings will be obscured.
54
Main / Women better verbally
Aug 03, 2006, 07:10 AM
Anybody got any links to actual studies that demonstrate that women have a greater innate verbal ability than men?

I hear that a lot, but have never found a study.
55
This is long, but I hope you'll take the time to read and comment.

I keep an interested, almost obsessive, eye on the fathers' rights movement and I'd like to propose a new direction.

It seems that as a primary -- almost monolithic -- aim of the movement is the legislation of presumpitve joint custody on divorce.  I've watched a presumptive joint custody bill languish in my state's legislature for 12 years now, and most recently it came up for a vote in April and got sent back to committee.  I live in NY and I'm talking about A330.  Opponents of shared parenting legislation argue two main points: that it leaves victims of domestic violence (read, women) open to further abuse, and that it doesn't take into account the myriad of situations that parents construct to care for their kids.

The first one is propoganda, "But what about the widows and orphans!?" type.  The second has some merit, though, and it is probably the most basic reason cited by judges and family law professionals who don't think all men assholes.  And they have a point.  Some children are the result of a meaningless one night stand on the one hand, while others may have been parented by a stay at home dad on the other.  

But while so many argue against presumptive shared parenting in NY, what our side has astoundingly missed as a powerful rhetorical point is that in NY, what we have now is presumptive sole custody.  If you read through NY law, there is no mention anywhere of the term "joint custody."  It doesn't really exist.

Here's my main point:  in states like NY, the term "joint custody" is nothing more than a descriptive term used to characterize the intention of a divorce decree, based on:

1.  the right of the non-custodial parent to view the medical and school records of their child.

2.  Liberal visitation.

That's joint custody in NY and many other states.  It's really still sole custody and if you google Bast v Bast, you'll also find that there is no distinction -- at all -- made for CS guidelines dependent upon parenting time.  That's another issue for another essay unto itself.

Some may flame me for saying this, but personally, I think that presumptive shared parenting is an unatainable goal for the fathers' rights movement, and one of the reasons I think this is that a reasonable person could view it as an unreasonable presumption.  In many cases, I myself believe this.

So what should be the new objective of the fathers' rights movement?

Simply, we should begin fighting for defined and protected custody determinations by legislation.  We should be working toward legislation that DEFINES parenting and custody arrangements without presumption.  That is an attainable goal, and one that I think a lot of family court judges would actually LIKE to see, since it actually gives them MORE options to take individual situations into account and apply fair outcomes.

Hypothetically, it would look something like this:

1.  Sole custody.  One parent takes care of the child, the other is responsible mainly for full CS.

2.  Primary physical custody, joint legal custody.  Basically, sole custody with some legal rights.  CS probably pretty close to basic guideline depending on parenting arrangements.

3.  Shared parenting.  Child essentially shares time and responsibilities among both parents.  CS set mostly to offset acute differences in the standard of living at each home.  The payor would not have to ask permission to make less money since it would be instantly adjustable according to changes in income.  Parents would have to agree to live no more than x miles away from each other.

The advantages are that judges will be able to keep their discretion with individual circumstances and parents would be much less likely to war over the fear of becoming an ultimate loser.

We need these things as viable options much more than we need them as presumptions.

Presumptive shared parenting is an unattainable goal, I think, and it may not be the right one.

Thoughts?
56
Main / Trish Wilson is a total fraud
Jun 23, 2006, 05:36 AM
I haven't posted over there since my mother and I were banned last year, but I lurk a lot.

I just realized what the big factor is in Trish Wilson's continuing money woes:

HER CHILD SUPPORT GRAVY TRAIN JUST ENDED!!!!

If you read around the site a little, there are some things that lead to this conclusion.

Her son just graduated high school so he's either 18 or almost 18.  Her support order is from Maryland I believe since that's where she used to live.  In Maryland suppot ends at 18.

Her son is moving to Maryland to go to community college.  Since his Dad lives there too, I'm imagining that he'll live with him since usually I don't think community colleges have dorms.  

So either way, one of the reasons she's hurting for money is SHE AIN'T GETTIN' THE FREE STUFF ANYMORE!

I also like how she mentions that his college is paid for, but she couldn't have afforded it.  Yeah guess who's footing the bill.

I'd love to meet her ex-husband.

That woman is a total fraud!  She plays at being a writer, but mostly all she does is take articles written by ACTUAL PROFESSIONAL WRITERS and criticize them.

She mentions all these magazines and everything that she's putting articles in, but do you notice she never mentions the magazine!

I bet she's not even doing that.

She's not just a jerk -- that woman's life is a total fraud!
57
Main / Can I stay at your house?
Jun 21, 2006, 07:45 AM
The national NOW conference is going to be held in my home town next month and I'd kind of like to not be here.

Who can put me up for a few days?
58
Main / Darren Mack and Clara Harris
Jun 20, 2006, 05:26 AM
I've been looking over some of the Father's Rights and men's movement sites and comments regarding Darren Mack and one thing that really strikes me is how similar the men's reactions are to the Mack case to the women's reactions to the Clara Harris case.

In many ways, Mack is to the men's movement what Harris was to the women's movement.

In both cases I hear the same basic argument,

"I think what he/she did was wrong, but I understand why he/she did it."

But during the whole Clara Harris thing, whenever I talked about it with other people, I argued that people's personalities are generally consistent.  That is, if someone runs her husband over with a car in extreme anger, she's basically of the personality that would act out in that way -- it's only the extreme of her behavior spectrum, usually based around a lack of accountability and an overriding need for control.

Now I honestly know little about Clara's personality and basically nothing about Mack's, but I'm afraid I have to take the same position in his case.

I think many in the men's movement are making a big mistake in being too understanding of Mack and that there is a much more powerful perspective to take:

That Mack is an exception.

Rather than holding him up as some sort of Robin Hood type hero, what he really illustrates is the usually peaceful nature of most men and the virtue of valuing a peaceful life for their children over control of their own lives that 99% seem to possess.

Of all the wastage that this judge seems to have left in his wake -- among both men and women -- it really says something that only one snapped.  

There's your message!
59
Main / Off topic, but cute
Jun 14, 2006, 05:47 PM
I have a mandolin I'm selling and I posted it on a yahoo group I subscribe to.  Here's one of the responses I got:

"My name is Amy, I'm fourteen and have always liked and listened to Bluegrass music, I grew up going to bluegrass festivals and having a great time. I love music and am really interested in learning to play. Last year i helped volunteer at Grey Fox with my dad and this year I'm going to be a real volunteer. I also have been volunteering at Podunk in East Hartford for about three years. My favorite bands are Del Mcoury and Dale Ann Bradley. I have tried to play the bass and played in the kids academy at Joe Val but we can't afford an upright and i'm more interested in the mandolin and am really excited to start learning it!
Thanks
Amy"

Needless to say Amy's going to have a new mandolin by the end of next week.  She told me she's got $175 saved for it from babysitting and yard work.  It's actually worth quite a bit more, but my contribution the next generation of traditional musicians and to the relationship between her and her dad.
60
Main / The Stay at Home thing
Jun 14, 2006, 05:07 PM
I'm starting my own thread because no one is paying enough attention to me over on the other one.

Anyway, I think that the whole issue of one parent staying home -- years at a stretch I mean -- while the other works full time and overtime is pretty much an artifact of a previous economic system.

It kind of reminds me of the crowede cities of the Northeast at the turn of the century when immigrants were moving in en masse.  Many of them had big families by today's standards even though there was no economic reason for it in a society that was based economically in wage earning.  It was a holdover from the Catholic and farming societies they came from.  In the end it created a movement for birth control.

It is without a doubt to me that there is a very basic human instinct to have children and live in a family.  But the thing to me is that what we see today in families with more than one kid, people are making a choice.  They're making a choice to live a certain way that no one is making them do.  It's sort of like if I decided I was going to be a professional musician(I could do it you know) and then complained endlessly about how I only make $20,000 a year and have to spend 300 days a year on the road.

I'm rambling some.....

Good Cab....