Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Yay roof! Yay roof!
Last night Spokane was whomped by a ferocious thunderstorm: a half hour of Niagara Falls, followed by two hours of steady moderate rain. A couple of downtown buildings lost their roofs ... presumably flat roofs with poor drainage.
It's a safe bet that my old roof would have suffered the same fate. The new roof (as of a month ago) passed with drying colors! Thank heaven I had enough sense to overcome my frugality and get it done.
= = = = =
Technical and personal note: While trying to rig Polistra as a cheerleader, I realized that I have no idea how a cheerleader moves! I'd paid no attention at all to cheerleaders in high school. I mostly hung around with the Bohemian girls (who would be the hippies a few years later, and the Goths today) and with a few of the hoods and semi-tough types. I saw the Bohemians as desirable, and the semi-toughs as beneath my station. These preferences were fatally mistaken. The bohemian girls treated me as a sort of exotic collectible or intellectual toy; the semi-tough girls, who were thoroughly Christian, respected me in the right ways, appreciated my clumsy efforts at chivalry, and certainly would have been better wives. I ended up marrying one of the Bohemian (hippie) types, which was a total disaster.
Here's the point: There was zero information available. Hormones and the classic high-school status hierarchy were the only guides. Parents and teachers gave no advice on the subject; magazines, radio and TV avoided the question; school gave the basics about sex and venereal disease but said nothing at all about selecting a mate. Serious textbooks and science mags were written from the false viewpoint of egalitarianism and Watsonian behaviorism.
A similar young nerd today will have tremendously better guidance, even if he doesn't listen to parents and teachers. He could listen to Rush and Dr. Laura, he could hang around various technical forums on the web and read the experiences of similar men who had been through the situation. [He could accidentally read this blog entry!] He could even find some textbooks that handle the subject correctly, because it's no longer illegal to acknowledge that males and females have certain permanent differences.
So the current era has problems, but it's distinctly better in this one way. Adolescents are barraged with a wider range of bad influences, but they also have access to useful and accurate info which simply wasn't around in 1966. ¶ 9:46 PM
Last night Spokane was whomped by a ferocious thunderstorm: a half hour of Niagara Falls, followed by two hours of steady moderate rain. A couple of downtown buildings lost their roofs ... presumably flat roofs with poor drainage.
It's a safe bet that my old roof would have suffered the same fate. The new roof (as of a month ago) passed with drying colors! Thank heaven I had enough sense to overcome my frugality and get it done.
= = = = =
Technical and personal note: While trying to rig Polistra as a cheerleader, I realized that I have no idea how a cheerleader moves! I'd paid no attention at all to cheerleaders in high school. I mostly hung around with the Bohemian girls (who would be the hippies a few years later, and the Goths today) and with a few of the hoods and semi-tough types. I saw the Bohemians as desirable, and the semi-toughs as beneath my station. These preferences were fatally mistaken. The bohemian girls treated me as a sort of exotic collectible or intellectual toy; the semi-tough girls, who were thoroughly Christian, respected me in the right ways, appreciated my clumsy efforts at chivalry, and certainly would have been better wives. I ended up marrying one of the Bohemian (hippie) types, which was a total disaster.
Here's the point: There was zero information available. Hormones and the classic high-school status hierarchy were the only guides. Parents and teachers gave no advice on the subject; magazines, radio and TV avoided the question; school gave the basics about sex and venereal disease but said nothing at all about selecting a mate. Serious textbooks and science mags were written from the false viewpoint of egalitarianism and Watsonian behaviorism.
A similar young nerd today will have tremendously better guidance, even if he doesn't listen to parents and teachers. He could listen to Rush and Dr. Laura, he could hang around various technical forums on the web and read the experiences of similar men who had been through the situation. [He could accidentally read this blog entry!] He could even find some textbooks that handle the subject correctly, because it's no longer illegal to acknowledge that males and females have certain permanent differences.
So the current era has problems, but it's distinctly better in this one way. Adolescents are barraged with a wider range of bad influences, but they also have access to useful and accurate info which simply wasn't around in 1966. ¶ 9:46 PM
