Heal the Bag

Heal the Bay and their sycophants are blasting the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for not outright banning plastic shopping bags - yet, like that model of common sense, San Francisco. They want the Board to intrude more into the business world and micromanage stores even more than they do already. Although environmentalists once hailed plastic bags as a better choice to brown paper bags, they now act like they are a bigger problem than street gangs.

Why?

Because some of the bags end up as litter and most of them are not recycled. By this reasoning, the Board should ban condoms and environmental advocacy materials.

I don’t know about you, but I find plastic bags to be very useful. I use them to take cans and bottles to recycling centers. I’m sure Heal the Bay would not want to discourage me from doing that. They are good as trash can liners. They are good for picking up dog poop, which I know Heal the Bay doesn’t want to discourage, as they don’t want pet feces making its way to the ocean. Though I’m not sure who is stopping the whales from making their “contributions” to the ocean, and if Heal the Bay thinks that land animal waste wasn’t making its way to the ocean for most of the last several thousand years, I wonder how bright they really are. Finally, plastic bags are excellent for assisting during assaults and for when USC students need to discard infants and are either ignorant or indifferent to the Board’s promotion of “Safe Surrender” of infants. This is the same Board, by the way, that publicizes “deadbeat dads”, who would have been completely off the hook if their sex partner had taken advantage of Safe Surrender.

Okay, so I’m kidding about that last advantage of plastic bags. But I do find them very convenient and helpful. And I have never, ever let one get away from me to become litter. I recycle most of them, and put the others to good secondary and tertiary use. Why should I be punished because of some careless people? I can’t help but think this is part of the movement to adapt to conditions caused, in part, by an influx of poor, ignorant illegal aliens. Let’s face it – neighborhoods where they live and congregate tend to have more litter. But since the Board doesn’t control the border, the Board can only react, and the rest of us have to deal with it.

The suggestion by folks like Heal the Bay is “Take your own permanent bag to the store.”

Okay, so even if I get in the habit of keeping my own bags in the car in case I make an unplanned stop at the store, I need more bags for some visits than others. If I come across a deal and want to buy a higher volume of an item, I need to be prepared. And how welcoming are stores going to be of someone carrying a bunch of bags with them as they go shopping? Ever hear of shoplifting? But I know the socialists who populate many environmental advocacy groups don’t consider property rights as important as keeping a bag out of the ocean.

Speaking of the ocean and “healing” the bay – I swam a lot in the supposedly polluted bay growing up, and I’m fairly healthy. I kind of like a certain amount of “pollution” in the bay, because I don’t like having to deal with poisonous, stinging, biting, and predatory ocean animals, who are more likely to be there in the surf if the water is cleaner.

Thanks, Heal the Bay, for trying to make villains out of supermarkets and other stores, when you should be shaming the careless bag users who litter or don't recycle. Be sure to do that ad campaign in multiple languages. Don't punish everyone for the actions of some.

There’s Nothing Wrong with Online Dating

People still bag on online dating and matchmaking as if it is somehow fundamentally different from other ways of finding companionship, as if there is no difference between what amounts to the old newspaper personals (like on Yahoo.com) or advanced matchmaing sites like eHarmony.com

There was a time when most of the people online were tech nerds and women “on the edge”. Frankly, most of the women online back then were not very attractive, to put it politely. Not that the men were studs, either, but the men had a marketable skill, something that makes them attractive to women looking for a serious partner. Men really don’t care all that much what a woman does for a living, unless he can cite it as evidence to other guys about how hot she is, or unless he wouldn’t want to be married to someone in that profession – like a stripper.

Anyway, I find the present-day dismissal by some of finding a partner online to be outdated.

Dating or finding a partner is a process that has a history of changing with technology. In the U.S., when most people lived in agriculture-dominated and rural areas, men would court women by going to the home in which they lived – usually their father or brother’s home – and spending time there, often with other family members of hers present. With the automobile and the population shift to dense urban areas, it was easy for couples to get away from their families and find entertainment in town, and to find a secluded place to be alone.

And if you don’t think that “the pill” changed dating, you are fooling yourself.

So, with the rise of user-controlled online communications, it is no surprise that such technology is also having an impact on how people find each other, especially now that most adults are online.

And really, why is this alternative dismissed by some? What are the other ways people find partners?

Let’s see… courting is out in most places, and very few people go the arranged marriage route.

There’s the workplace, but the risks of raising favoritism and sexual harassment issues are very real – especially for men, as most of the people who investigate alleged sexual harassment and discrimination are women, and if a dating situation goes badly, how good is it for everyone to have those people working in the same place?

Church, temple or synagogue can be a good place, especially since it is more likely you will be religiously compatible, but this carries the same risk of awkwardness as workplace dating.

Many people meet through a common activity or hobby. This can be a great way to meet someone. But it still carries a the risk of the awkwardness factor and splits within that enthusiast community, and people who are fundamentally incompatible can still enjoy the same activities.

There are people who like to set up two of their friends, which can also carry the awkwardness factor. Plus, when a woman sets her friend up with a guy, she is telling them both “I’m not attracted to him, but you may be.” With reminds me that men can't date their female "friends", because if they are "friends" in the first place it is because the woman is not attracted to him.

Some people are set up by family members. For a lot of people, this spells disaster. Some people “steal” their date from a family member, which of course is a recipe for an even bigger disaster. Hey, but at least they didn’t discover each other online!

Bars and clubs can be a great place to meet someone – as long as you are just looking for a casual good time. But there are guys who don’t like to waste their money buying booze for a woman and all of her friends, or have no interest in “dancing”. And really, why is this any better than finding someone online? You both like to party. So what?

Finally, some people meet on the street or in transit, like on a flight. Again, why is this better than finding someone online?

Finding someone online can carry the benefit of more readily determining that someone has common goals, values, interests, likes, and dislikes as you. Yes, people online can be lying about themselves. No, communicating online is not the same thing as face-to-face interaction. So what? People you meet the other ways lie about themselves, too, and in either case it is up to you to figure it out. E-mails and instant messages aren’t supposed to replace face-to-face interaction any more than a phone call or snail mail is.

Let me be clear here. I’m referring to finding someone online, not the mistake of thinking that you are “dating” someone if you’ve never met them face-to-face and don’t see them regularly face-to-face. Online communications are only a tool in finding someone and a help in staying in touch. Once you have found someone who might be right for what you need at that time, it is up to you to actually date them. If that is how it goes, there is nothing wrong with “online dating”.

Get With It on Technology, Dr. Laura

As I’ve written before, although Dr. Laura is usually right-on, she’s off on her contempt for certain technologies, such as interactive games, social networking sites, instant messaging, and blogs. Yeah, I know there is a lot of pure dung out there about her on blogs, but blogging should not be dismissed with a broad brush. She even has her own blog. Kind of. It’s really more just columns stacked on top of one another. Kind of like right here.

Anyway, there was a caller on today’s show who was complaining that her husband spent a lot of time on games, MySpace, and instant messaging with his friends, and without finding out exactly how much time or exactly what he was using the technologies for, Dr. Laura immediately dismissed him as a “15 year-old” and advised that the woman tell her husband that it was time to put away childish things.

I’m not going to rehash everything from my previous post. But just because the youth is quickest to adapt to new technologies, doesn’t mean using them should be equated with immaturity. I realize that Dr. Laura long ago “made it” and is very successful and got through much of life without these things, but many successful, mature adults with balanced lives find social networking and instant messaging to be a great way to keep in touch with family and friends, work jointly on projects, develop professional contacts, and share experiences with other people in the same situation (expecting mothers in the same month of pregnancy, for one example, or people losing extra weight, for another). In some industries, if you don’t have an online presence you simply don’t exist.

I also fail to see how playing games should be automatically any different than watching TV or reading a magazine, activities during with most people don’t interact with other people in the room.

Dr. Laura understands that men have a need for sex. That drive is there at 15. But she doesn’t accuse horny husbands of being 15. Likewise, some men enjoy playing games. Me? I gave them up when I was a teen, but I know others my age who still play them.

So while some things, like moral rights and wrongs, don’t change and Dr. Laura should stick to her guns, other things, like technology, move on, and change should be embraced, as long as it isn’t illegal, immoral, or fattening.

As for the caller – if that’s the way her man was before they married, she should have discussed what her expectations would be in the marriage BEFORE she ordered the wedding cake. There are very few things about a man that should or will automatically change because he went through a wedding ceremony. I'm sure there are things she does that he doesn't understand.