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IQ Tests

I dislike stupidity. Particularly willful stupidity.

The problem is that you can be having a conversation with some one that you don’t realize is stupid, then they whip out the dumb-hammer and steal some of your IQ points by osmosis.

I hate that.

Since my lobbying efforts to have the willfully stupid get identifying facial tattoos seems to be failing, I’ve developed a system. My system helps me identify willfully stupid people and allows me to ignore anything they say, or–more likely–walk away as soon as I’ve identified them.

Here’s my system:

If someone expresses a specific opinion on a specific topic, I know they are an inefficient use of air and should be ignored, preferably from a different room.

What topics? I don’t pick topics that are necessarily controversial. For example, politics. I’m a died-in-the-wool Leavemethehellaloneitarian. Commies who want to take my money to fund stupid programs or stupid people aren’t a part of my IQ test. They’re just misguided. I’ll pat them on the head and change the topic, because I’m not interested in being either a history or an economics teacher.

The topics I go for are straightforward. It’s a matter of “If you believe this, you are beyond help.”

What topics?

The moon landing was a hoax. Buzz Alrdin actually got the honor of punching one of these idiots. I won’t get into the science here because–as I said–I don’t want to be a teacher. Just 2 points from a human nature perspective: 1) The Russians were watching and good tell where the radio signals were coming from. If they could have embarrassed us, they would have. It was a Space Race. 2) Conspiracy 101. 13 people can keep a secret if 12 of them are dead.
9/11 Truthers. There’s too much stupid rolled up in anybody who think 9/11 was an inside job. Engineering, human nature, cinematography, and critical thinking are all topics they can never master. Just walk away. They probably won’t notice they are talking to a wall for a while, anyway. If they do get offended, it’s no big deal, because there’s no way they can remember your name longer than it takes to take a couple of breaths. Seriously, they became Truthers because it’s the only job they could get that didn’t mind retraining them after each coffee break.
Holocaust Deniers. I almost skipped this one because it’s hard to describe them without resorting to language I try to avoid here. Ten million people died as a direct result of evil. Evil that ran a successful PR campaign on television. Evil that was witnessed by millions as it was happening, and by tens of thousands more as the concentration camps were liberated and mass graves were uncovered. If you deny this, you are not only beyond help, you are beneath contempt.

There are some other groups that get this to a lesser degree. Anti-vaccinators get a pat on the head. They are benefiting from the herd immunity provided be the people who get their kids vaccinated. If the rest of us went that route, we’d grow some fabulous epidemics again.

What about you? Do you have a shortcut system for recognizing people better left ignored?

Failed Side Hustle: Scrapping

Business

Last week, the washing machine in our rental house died. It was older than I am, so this wasn’t really a surprise. It was one of just two appliances we didn’t replace before we moved the renters in.

English: Melting metal in a ladle for casting ... — English: Melting metal in a ladle for casting Deutsch: Metall wird in einer Gießpfanne zum Schmelzen gebracht. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My wife–bargain shopper that she is–found a replacement on Craigslist. We got it in, then left the dead washing machine next to the replacement, as a warning to any other appliance that thinks it can shirk its assigned work.

This morning, we went over to pull the corpse of our washing machine out of the basement.

Now, I am an out-of-shape desk jockey, my wife is considerably weaker than I am, and a 40 year old washing machine weighs more than 200 pounds.

In the basement.

I’m Superman. Although at one point, I did trade 10 years of the useful life of my right knee in exchange for not letting that thing tumble down the stairs on top of me.

What do you do with a dead washing machine?We could have the garbage company pick it up for $25. Or we could leave it on the curb and wait for some stinking scrapper to take it.

Or…we could join the dark side and scrap it ourselves.

For the uninitiated, scrappers are the people who drive around looking for fence-posts to steal out of other people’s yards, or cut the catalytic converters out of cars parked at park-and-ride bus stops, or steal all of the copper pipes out of your house while your on vacation. Sometimes, they get scrap metal from legitimate sources, I’ve heard.

We decided to go the legitimate route and take the washing machine to the scrap metal dealer in the next town over.

It was pretty easy. We pulled in with the washer in the trailer. A guy on a forklift pulled up and took it, then handed us a receipt to bring to the cashier. She paid us in cash, and we were on our way.

$7.50 richer.

200 pounds of steel, and we made less than $10.

There are people who pay their bills by recycling scrap metal, but I have no idea how. Driving around looking for things to scrap would seem to burn more gas than you’d make turning it in.

Some people scour Craigslist looking for metal things in the free section.

Some people have an arrangement with mechanics to remove their garbage car parts.

Some people are only looking to supplement their government handout checks enough to pay for cigarettes.

Us? We’re going to leave scrapping to the scavengers.

Did I Die?

Finance, Parenting, Relationships

If you’re reading this, you should probably be able to guess that I have not, in fact, died.

So your next question may be “What the heck are you up to, if you’re not posting here?”

That’s a valid question.

It’s been a rough year, and I won’t share details about all of it, but here goes:

I’ve been trying to focus on my marriage. We’ve had some problems that take time to work out. One of the problems is that I’m traveling for work at least monthly. That sounds like staying in a hotel with nothing to do would be great for writing, but it never seems to work out that way. There’s always something going on.

One of the solutions for that–in relation to my marriage–is that we are going on weekly date nights. Every Friday, the boy watches his sisters and the wife and I go out. We usually have a dance lesson, followed by dinner and some activity, which has meant actual dancing in actual bars on actual dance floors with actual bands playing live music. It’s fun, but it sidesteps frugality completely. The dancing lessons run $95 each. Most nights, there’s a $5 cover at the bar where we dance, and dinner is somewhere between $50 and $100, depending on the restaurant and drinks. So, we’re dropping $150-200 per week on dates.

Totally worth it.

The date nights have also spun off into a new venture. Dating & Dining (click the link!) is the site where we document and review our dates. We’re not reviewing our date, because that would be weird. “Honey, you rocked my world when we got home, bu you were kinda crabby tonight. I’m only going to give you 3 stars.”

No.

We are reviewing the restaurants and activities we’re doing, using the traditional “Pants Off” rating system. A really good restaurant will knock our pants off, sometimes literally.

That’s more writing and a lot of time gone.

On top of that, Linda has gotten both her motorcycle license and her carry permit, so there’s riding and shooting(never together!) to fill in the time.

And kids. Kids–much like our dog, but totally unlike our pythons–want attention. And food. And games. And a freaking overpriced American Girl Doll. And time. So we play games and bring out the Daddy/Daughter date.

In short, since we got our finances in order, I’ve been trying to draw back from being an obsessive workaholic and focus on the reason I became one in the first place: my family.

$1500 Luxury

Finance, Relationships

I’ve got some expensive habits. Not like Charlie Sheen snorting $2500 of blow of a hooker’s boobs, but still expensive.

Charlie Sheen in March 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My latest one is dancing lessons. Linda surprised me on one of weekly date nights a few months ago. She found a Groupon for the dancing studio we used before we got married. It was $69 for a month of unlimited group lessons.

When the month was up, we signed on for their beginner cycle of lessons, which cost another $400.

And now we’re starting the Social Foundation program.

Social Foundation is a series of classes that teach some advanced moves, but also to teach dancers how to lead and follow properly and how to dance socially and look respectable on a dance floor in any number of situations. Leading and following are important because every single dance move out there has specific cues that tell your partner what’s coming next. If she doesn’t know, you both look clumsy.

So we chose the four dances we’re going to learn better and signed up. We’re going to learn the Rumba, Waltz, Tango, and Swing. We’re already pretty good at Rumba and Swing, but we’re going to get better. Personally, I’m hoping to also figure out how to use the Tango on an open dance floor without crashing into people. That way, we can pretend to be Gomez and Morticia, my heroes.

Now, the thing is, dance lessons aren’t cheap. They cost about $100 per hour, where an hour is defined as 45 minutes. We’re rolling the last half of our beginner lessons into our social foundation lessons and paying $1400.

Ouch.

They gave us the option of financing it over 3-4 months, but I didn’t want to pay an extra $200 for the privilege. I think we’ll be tapping the vacation fund to pay for the lessons.

Why am I willing to pay this much?

Dancing is one of the very few things Linda and I both enjoy. We’re pretty good at it, it’s great exercise, it’s fun, and (shhh!) it counts as foreplay. It also doesn’t hurt to have the sidelines of the dance floor lined with people watching us dance, wishing they could do what we’re doing…or wishing their husbands were willing to learn how to dance. This also isn’t just something we’re doing at the studio. We are out on a dance floor dancing to a live band almost every week. That usually comes with about $25 in cover charges and drinks.

Fun, exercise, have sex, and inspire jealousy. That’s a winning combination. And finding things to do that we both love to do is difficult and easily worth the $2000 we’ve paid the dance studio this year.

Not the Center of the Universe

Parenting, Relationships

On Sunday, I dropped Punk #3 off at a birthday party. She walked into the yard, saw her friends and took off running. I confirmed times with the birthday girl’s mother and left. I went home and had Punk #2 help me with repairs to Coffin #1. It is Halloween season, after all.

When I came back two hours later, they had just finished eating cake and were about to open up presents, so I got to hang around for a while.

I noticed some amazing things:

Fully 75% of this family’s living room was devoted to play space for the kid. As you walk in the front door, you get to see a giant pile of toys and kid-craft crap. Most of what is traditionally a gathering area was taken over by kid.
Of the dozen or so children who came to the party, close to half of the parents stayed. Really, is your precious little snowflake so endangered by her friends that you can’t come up with something better to do that watch her play with her friends and ignore you for two hours while under the supervision of the resident parent?
Clowns. Ok, it wasn’t technically a clown, but a guy named Mr. Fun who hands out whoopie cushions and entertains kids while wearing odd clothes counts as a clown, to me. I get it, you want your special little snowflake to have a memorable birthday, but if every party is big and over-the-top, which one will she remember? Maybe she’ll only remember a sense of entitlement.

I very firmly believe that children should not be raised to feel like they are the center of the universe. Not even to Mom & Dad. They need to know that we have lives and interests that aren’t them.

Mothers and fathers NEED to have lives and interests that are entirely separate from their children. If your entire focus for 20+years is on the lives of your little brats, what is going to happen to you when they move out? Are you prepared to abandon two decades of self-training and suddenly become your own person again?

Husbands and wives need to have time to themselves that excludes the children. When the monsters finally leave, you need to be able to have a relationship that doesn’t revolve around who spilled what where and who’s turn is it to clean it up.

Children are not–and should not be–the focal point of a household. Leave them at a birthday party. Let them find a way to entertain themselves for a few hours. Go on a date.

I promise you, letting your kids see their parents happily doing things together–even if it’s gleefully leaving them with a sitter–will do more for their long-term well-being than knowing you’re standing in the corner at a birthday party watching her fake a fart with a 25 cent toy.

Let her be independent. Let her know that other priorities do exist for other people. Let her fall down and scrape her knees. Let her figure out how things work for herself.

That is life, after all. Let her live it and don’t forget to live it for yourself.

Resolving Legal Disputes

Misc

Shelby County Courthouse, Memphis, Tennessee, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dispute resolution has to do with the impartial rectification of conflict between individuals or parties. More specifically it is the utilization and execution of methods that are designed to resolve conflicts. In a case in which there is a dispute between people or groups, often times a third, neutral, party is selected to be an impartial representative for the disputing persons. Although dispute resolution can refer to resolutions both in and out of the court, it mainly applies to disputes that are settled outside of the legal framework of the judicial system.

Two of the most common types of dispute resolution are known as adjudicative and consensual. While adjudicative resolution requires a third party to mediate the outcome, such as a judge or jury, and usually involves some form of litigation, consensual resolution is the attempt to solve the issue between the two disputing parties without involving a third party, although at times a neutral arbitrator will be selected to preside over the case, though they will often be there not so much for authoritative purposes but more as a council to keep things fair. There is also a third upcoming type of dispute resolution, online dispute resolution, or ODR, which has become more popular in recent years with the rise of the internet’s prominence in daily life, but it is mainly the application of traditional consensual resolution practices, only adapted to the online environment.

Many disputes can be solved simply through adherence to the law, however, sometimes issues arise that the legal structure isn’t equipped to handle, and so a third party is chosen to resolve the conflict. These types of conflict fall within the jurisdiction of the law and so will be relegated to the political system for arbitration. Judicial resolutions are conflicts that will be, hopefully, settled by the court. In the United States, this is often the case with dispute resolution. This form of resolution usually involves litigation. This is the use of outside individuals to argue for or against the disputing parties. In a courtroom, the lawyers are the litigators, while the judge and jury listen to the arguments in order to come to their decisions.

Extrajudicial resolution is non-court settlement of conflict. Also known as alternative dispute resolution, or ADR, this is what people are usually referring to when discussing dispute resolution. ADR is usually more efficient, cost effective, and less time consuming than judicial resolutions. Extrajudicial resolution concerns various types of ways to settle conflict. These include arbitration and mediation. In arbitration neutral individuals will listen to both sides of an argument and render a decision based on evidence. Unlike the court systems, this proceeding doesn’t necessarily include a binding agreement with the parties.

Mediation is used in extrajudicial resolution as a way to open a dialogue between conflicting parties. The idea is to use a trained neutral third party in order to come up with unique solutions to solve the issue. A mediator is trained to be both an effective negotiator as well as an excellent communicator. A mediator is like a judge in that they cannot take sides, and they do not give legal advice either. Their decisions are not obligatorily followed, though they tend to be followed since the mediators are trained to make decisions that benefit both parties.

The techniques used in dispute resolution can be used both in and outside of the court room. It is often used by individuals who wish to speed up the process by not having to get into the political system. However, they are useful in many cases where individuals wish to come to the most beneficial agreement for all the parties involved.

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