response 54 of 79:

Aug 2 17:36 UTC 2003

I'd rather see divorce be easier, not harder, maybe
having all marriage contracts be for a set number of
years, say five.  The basic disolution contract could
be agreed to at the time of the marriage.

At the end of the five years the contract could be 
renewed if both partners were in agreement.  This would
keep everyone on their toes, looking for ways to 
keep the relationship thriving, instead of one or
both partners feeling tenured, and complacent.

Would this result in more divorces?  Most certainly.
Would more good marriages fail?  Doubt it.

I wouldn't want to be in a marriage where I wasn't loved
and respected.  Nor would I want to feel stuck with
a partner I didn't love or respect.  Five years 
seems about right to evaluate if the partnership is
working.  Bad marriages happen.  Be as gentle on yourself
and those in the fallout zone as you can be.  Learn from your 
mistakes.  Avoid playing the victim and move on.

response 56 of 79:

Aug 2 18:04 UTC 2003

STeve and I have a contract marriage.  We contracted for 300 years.  It has
been a running joke throughout the 21 years we've been together.  One of the
few things that made him smile right after the Drs confirmed that he had a
stroke was my leaning over and whispering in his ear that he just had to be
ok because he had 281 years left in the contract and I was holding him to it.

response 58 of 79:

Aug 2 20:08 UTC 2003

I personally don't know of any divorces that occured due to wife abuse.  Jim
was in an abusive marriage for ten years but stayed married because he wanted
to raise children.  At the time divorced men lost their childen (every other
Thursday visits is not raising children) and also had to pay 1/4 to 1/3 of
their income to the person who stole their children.

Re visiting twice a year, that does not sound to me like jep's brother is
avoiding contact.  I visited once a year at most but wrote frequently.

response 60 of 79:

Aug 2 20:41 UTC 2003

I agree that most divorces are not about abuse.  But if more people were
stuck in relationships that weren't working for them, then some of those
non-abusive, unhappy relationships might well develop into abusive
relationships.  I think a bad relationship is more likely to get worse
than it is to get better if you "stick it out".  You know, you only get
one life.  Should you devote it to trying to make a marriage work with
some person that you don't even like anymore, much less love?

Children certainly change the equation.  But I think not as dramatically
as people used to think.  I think every American who doesn't have
divorced parents themselves at least has numerous friends with divorced
parents.  We know from personal experience that divorce isn't great for
kids, but it isn't disasterous either.  I think that often a divorce in
a family with kids is harder for the parents than for the kids.

response 62 of 79:

Aug 3 00:22 UTC 2003

Dan brings up a good point. The whole concept of karma is very strong in
India, especially the rural parts. If you're having a bad marriage,it's most
probably of the bad deeds you performed in earlier lives. Of course, this
logic seems to apply only to women. You'll hear a lot of "this is what my fate
is" and the like, from women who will not get a divorce. Anf then there are
monetary factors, which are almost as great in determining whether one should
get a divorce. How will I support myself and my children...

response 64 of 79:

Aug 3 02:34 UTC 2003

CGI toddlers?

Ah, you mean computer generated images of toddlers.  In the context of 
the rest of the day's discussion, you threw me for a loop, Russ.

response 66 of 79:

Aug 3 20:13 UTC 2003

Re #64:  Thank goodness it was only a loop.  If you went into
infinite recursion, stack overflow and crash, I'd never forgive
myself!

response 68 of 79:

Aug 4 13:12 UTC 2003

Another truth about the USA that isn't always evident in the movies is 
that the USA has been coasting for at least thirty years now.  The mass 
and velocity were so enormous to start with that it's taking forever to 
coast to a stop.  There are occasional little bumps like 9/11 and 
the "dot-com implosion" that reduce the momentum slightly, and there 
are compensatory jolts of force like the rise of the African American 
educated middle class.  But, on balance, the machine that was moving 
the whole thing along is no longer powerful enough to do so.  

The machine, of course, is human practical intelligence, what used to 
be called "American ingenuity" (although there is nothing 
especially "American" about it).  There are a million theories about 
why it lost its power in the USA: liberal humanists blame the know-
nothing Christian Right, intellectuals blame degraded public education, 
Ayn Randites blame the rise of unreason, feminists blame testosterone, 
conservatives blame the tax-and-spend mentality, religious 
fundamentalists blame godlessness, snobs blame popular culture.  Insert 
your pet theory here.  These are all related, and there might even be 
truth in some of them.  

response 70 of 79:

Aug 4 15:30 UTC 2003

Playing devil's advocate just a bit:  Wasn't most of the fundamental
research that made the internet possible done 30+ years ago, consistent
with Michael's timeline in #68?

response 72 of 79:

Aug 4 15:52 UTC 2003

> What myths/images/impressions created by Hollywood movies, usually, 
> would you like to dispel about the US? 

"The US doesn't really look like that."  Most TV shows and many movies
(especially stuff made before say 1985) were filmed in Southern
California.  The first time I visited LA and Pasadena, it was really
weird: all of a sudden, I was in places that looked like the TV shows I
had watched growing up.  The lighting was right, the buildings looked
right, etc.  I hadn't experienced that before.


> Apparantly getting a toddler into a movie
> is harder than an alien, a talking pig, or a dinosaur.

Real toddlers are probably impossible to work with on movie sets, and it's
still very hard to do a realistic CGI human being.  Easier to do something
non-human, because people won't catch it as easily.

response 74 of 79:

Aug 4 16:25 UTC 2003

" US suburbia is never as interestng or amusing as movies like American 
 Beauty want you to think it is.  "

uhh, ya it is.

response 76 of 79:

Aug 13 01:51 UTC 2003

Re #17: Sort of like how my friend from Washington gets annoyed when
people use 'West Coast' when they mean 'California'.

Re #49: I've heard Manhattan mostly smells like urine.  True?

Re #67: I agree with you for the most part, but on the other hand,
hormones change all through life.  They peak sometime in your twenties,
generally, then decline gradually after that.  It's not as if there are
only changes in your teens and then things are stable for the rest of
your life.

Re #72: At the rate things are going now, pretty soon all the movies
that are supposed to be set in the U.S. will look like Canada. ;>