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Hey, I just had an AWESOME PEACH. I didn't realize they were in season quite enough yet to be as good as all that. Granted it wasn't quite ripe when I bought it on Saturday, but it's been in a brown paper bag since. I was excited by how awesome it was. Bad peaches are so sucky, but good peaches rock the world.
I did productiveness this morning, ie, I started on next year's One Book project (Up, Down, and Around by Pittsburgher Katherine Ayres --which basically means I brainstormed some possible activities, but still, it was productive. This book really lends itself to activities. I might enlist the aid of you composers out there (how many composers do I have on my friends list? Three? Four even? You guys are a talented bunch) to help set it to music-- I've got a bit of a tune in my head already, but to get the bugs out... unless that idea gets nixed for some reason or another. Just, the book lends itself to dancing anyway, and is quite sing-songy, I don't think I could read it straight without accidentally singing it.
So now that I've done productiveness, and Sammy is still busy playing with daddy, I'll do unproductiveness and continue the controversial questions survey
see original for new questions here"
16. Do you think the tax code needs to be reformed? If so, how?
I don't know, it does seem unnecessarily convoluted, but if we had to pay the flat income tax currently designated to our income level we wouldn't be able to pay taxes at all-- or, we wouldn't be able to eat, either/or-- so exemptions are good; the income tax would need to be COMPLETELY reconfigured if people would just pay flat taxes based solely on income. Jason's one of those guys who likes to shout out "Income Tax is unconstitutional!" all the time (though I don't really see this-- sure there's nothing in the constitution that says there should be an income tax, but there's nothing that says there SHOULDN'T be either), but I think income tax makes more sense than sales tax does. Perhaps if sales tax was configured into prices ahead of time and then stores were taxed based on their sales, but it always bugs me that the ticketed price is not the price you pay. Especially in dollar stores. They should call them $1.06 stores. Then again it also bugs me that the amount you earn is not the amount that shows up on your paycheck, too. Ah, I know taxes are a necessary evil, but if politicians would stop voting themselves payraises maybe that wouldn't be so bad.
17. What's your opinion on the death penalty?
I don't believe in it any more than I do abortion. Well, maybe slightly more than, because at least a criminal may have actually done something to deserve to die. But morally I don't believe it is up to people to decide who lives and dies, and people giving the death penalty are as guilty of murder as the people getting it-- assuming the person getting it is even truly guilty to begin with! If killing someone who is in the act of trying to kill other people is the only way to stop them, that's one thing, but to calmly and rationally decide that a person should die for their crimes is something different. As I used to try to explain to my middle schoolers, there's a difference between self-defense and revenge!
18. Do you think morality is absolute, relative, or somewhere in between?
"Somewhere in between" isn't quite right. I think there's a BASIC absolute morality and everything within that gets into shades of gray. I think the basic absolute morality is the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do to you. Of course then it gets tricky after that, as people can't see from other people's points of views and somehow BELIEVE what they're doing is what the other person needs even when it's not really. But it's still closer to a morality that everyone can agree on regardless of religion or lack thereof (for the record the Golden Rule is not in that phraseology linked to any particular religion; the Christian Bible wording of it is "Love your neighbor as yourself." So the Golden Rule isn't forcing anyone else's religion on anyone else). But there's somebody crying out to be fed right now, and since I would love people to feed ME whenever I'm hungry, I'll do the moral thing and go help him out now.
I did productiveness this morning, ie, I started on next year's One Book project (Up, Down, and Around by Pittsburgher Katherine Ayres --which basically means I brainstormed some possible activities, but still, it was productive. This book really lends itself to activities. I might enlist the aid of you composers out there (how many composers do I have on my friends list? Three? Four even? You guys are a talented bunch) to help set it to music-- I've got a bit of a tune in my head already, but to get the bugs out... unless that idea gets nixed for some reason or another. Just, the book lends itself to dancing anyway, and is quite sing-songy, I don't think I could read it straight without accidentally singing it.
So now that I've done productiveness, and Sammy is still busy playing with daddy, I'll do unproductiveness and continue the controversial questions survey
see original for new questions here"
16. Do you think the tax code needs to be reformed? If so, how?
I don't know, it does seem unnecessarily convoluted, but if we had to pay the flat income tax currently designated to our income level we wouldn't be able to pay taxes at all-- or, we wouldn't be able to eat, either/or-- so exemptions are good; the income tax would need to be COMPLETELY reconfigured if people would just pay flat taxes based solely on income. Jason's one of those guys who likes to shout out "Income Tax is unconstitutional!" all the time (though I don't really see this-- sure there's nothing in the constitution that says there should be an income tax, but there's nothing that says there SHOULDN'T be either), but I think income tax makes more sense than sales tax does. Perhaps if sales tax was configured into prices ahead of time and then stores were taxed based on their sales, but it always bugs me that the ticketed price is not the price you pay. Especially in dollar stores. They should call them $1.06 stores. Then again it also bugs me that the amount you earn is not the amount that shows up on your paycheck, too. Ah, I know taxes are a necessary evil, but if politicians would stop voting themselves payraises maybe that wouldn't be so bad.
17. What's your opinion on the death penalty?
I don't believe in it any more than I do abortion. Well, maybe slightly more than, because at least a criminal may have actually done something to deserve to die. But morally I don't believe it is up to people to decide who lives and dies, and people giving the death penalty are as guilty of murder as the people getting it-- assuming the person getting it is even truly guilty to begin with! If killing someone who is in the act of trying to kill other people is the only way to stop them, that's one thing, but to calmly and rationally decide that a person should die for their crimes is something different. As I used to try to explain to my middle schoolers, there's a difference between self-defense and revenge!
18. Do you think morality is absolute, relative, or somewhere in between?
"Somewhere in between" isn't quite right. I think there's a BASIC absolute morality and everything within that gets into shades of gray. I think the basic absolute morality is the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do to you. Of course then it gets tricky after that, as people can't see from other people's points of views and somehow BELIEVE what they're doing is what the other person needs even when it's not really. But it's still closer to a morality that everyone can agree on regardless of religion or lack thereof (for the record the Golden Rule is not in that phraseology linked to any particular religion; the Christian Bible wording of it is "Love your neighbor as yourself." So the Golden Rule isn't forcing anyone else's religion on anyone else). But there's somebody crying out to be fed right now, and since I would love people to feed ME whenever I'm hungry, I'll do the moral thing and go help him out now.
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Date: 2007-07-04 10:41 am (UTC)From:The Golden Rule is usually a good guideline, although there are probably situations where it doesn't quite work out, because not everyone necessarily WANTS to be treated the same way. To give an extreme example, what if you're a masochist? I guess it works better if you use it as a general attitude than something totally literal.