Shotgun

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Everything posted by Shotgun

  1. Shotgun
    We were married a little over two years... I think what probably made us different than the average was that we didn't buy a house together or have any children, and we kept all of our finances separate... and the divorce itself was inexpensive because we had no need to get lawyers involved.
  2. Shotgun
    Interesting... When I got divorced, my wealth seemed to be about the same as it was before I got married (and about the same as it was while I was married), and so did my ex-husband's... except that our salaries were both probably a little higher than they were before we got married. But yeah, I think it might have taken more of a toll on my mental health...
  3. Shotgun
    It always makes me giggle at how much stuff like this comes from someone with "peaceful" in their screen name. And I don't think it matters too much if Nagin is racist... We're all doomed anyway, now that we've pissed God off.
  4. Shotgun
    True... People are living their lives and learning whether they are in school or not, and the diversity of their experience in either situation is going to affect their worldview. But I think a person's worldview is also affected by their natural ability to think for themselves. There are some people who spend years in college and the only "intellect" they have acquired is the ability to regurgitate the ideas of their favorite instructors. It often seems to be used to describe where you are but others are not, as in, "Yeah, that's easy for them because they've never had to live in the real world." In either instance, it seems to me to be some silly phrase that is used in an effort to separate oneself from others, but it has no real meaning at all (except as a show on MTV).
  5. Shotgun
    One does not necessarily have to spend a lot of time in school to receive a comprehensive education. In fact, sometimes spending a lot of time in school can cause one to have a narrow view of the world. I think it depends, whether you spend a lot of time in school or not, on how much you are able to think for yourself. I'm still trying to figure out what this "real world" thing is... I'm pretty sure that everyone, whether they are going to college, or in the military, or working at McDonalds, or whatever... is living in the real world.
  6. Shotgun
    The textbooks that I have had for most subjects seem to be the most widely-used books for that particular subject, from what I have been able to tell. And of all the textbook reviews I have read (including some that were not textbooks required by the school), I'm pretty sure that I have never seen anyone complaining that the author came across as being conservative. I'm sure those books are out there, but my experience makes me think that textbooks used in U.S. colleges/universities are more likely to have a liberal perspective than a conservative perspective. Oh, and I just read through a bunch of reviews for "Icons of Evolution," and none of the people reviewing it appeared to have read it as required reading for a class (they usually tend to mention if that is why they read it), so I am guessing that it wasn't specifically written to be a college textbook.
  7. Shotgun
    The books that seem to be written from a liberal point of view: government, sociology, anthropology, anatomy & physiology... One of my chemistry books even made a direct jab at the Bush administration, which I thought was a bit odd in a chemistry book (but now I can't remember what it said - I think it might have had something to do with their lack of effort to protect the environment, or something like that). And some of my textbooks have just stuck to the point without appearing to lean either way... but I've never noticed any of them leaning toward the conservative side.
  8. Shotgun
    With those stats, it would seem that anyone obtaining a degree from a U.S. university would at least have had a liberal influence from most of their professors over the years. So perhaps (college-) educated people do tend to be liberal... But there are highly intellectual people who have not been to college, and there are college graduates who are nowhere near being highly intellectual... so the fact that more college graduates are liberal than conservative cannot be used to say that liberals are necessarily more intelligent than conservatives. (Just wanted to point out that that is not what I was trying to get at by starting this thread.)
  9. Shotgun
    I often shop for my textbooks at amazon.com, and I'll usually read the book reviews just for fun... and, when a book gets a bad review, one of the more common complaints I see is that the author is writing from a biased liberal perspective, or something along those lines. And I have noticed that most of my textbooks do seem to lean toward the liberal side, but none of them lean toward the conservative side. This made me curious, so I looked up some stats... which varied, as stats do... but it looks like the large majority of faculty at U.S. colleges and universities are liberals, which I guess I've heard before... But why is this? Are conservatives just not attracted to education as a profession? Or do liberals tend to be more likely to seek higher education than conservatives? Any thoughts?
  10. Shotgun
    Well there's nothing wrong with that. But hopefully the number of kids they "should" have was directly correlated to how much money they made and how intelligent and good-looking they were... because, of course, we don't want poor, stupid, ugly people having children.
  11. Shotgun
    He was referring to nonsmokers who "berate and patronize" smokers even when they are not smoking (or at least that is how I read it)... It is one thing to ask someone to stop doing something that is affecting your own health... But going up to your overweight co-worker, calling them a "fat sack of shit" and then giving them your unsolicited advice (quite rudely) about how you think they should live their life... that's a completely different thing.
  12. Shotgun
    Then you will have turned into a person who is exactly like the "self righteous, obnoxious, omnipotent non-smoker" that you loathe so much.
  13. Shotgun
    I feel pretty much the same way... I used to be strictly pro-choice, but now I'm on the fence about it. I would prefer to see abortion go away, except in very particular circumstances, but simply making it illegal is not going to solve such a complex problem... So yeah, I don't think I would start advocating to ban abortion unless I could think of a real solution... Same with the death penalty... I used to think it was a good idea... But the more I've learned about it, the more I see that it's not really serving it's purpose - mostly because the system doesn't seem to be working so well... So I'm starting to think that it's not such a good idea.
  14. Shotgun
    There is more than one kind of knot??? And there are names for them??? I guess that shows how much I know! But then I'm not usually the one tying the knots...
  15. Shotgun
    You might want to look up the definition of hitting. If it makes you uncomfortable to think that you are hitting your child, then you probably shouldn't spank them. Whether you do it out of frustration and anger, or you do it in a controlled manner, it is still hitting your kid. But I'm not trying to tell anyone how to raise their kids... It's just something that I would personally not choose to do.
  16. Shotgun
    A suicidal one, apparently.
  17. Shotgun
    Shotgun, the Other White Meat.
  18. Shotgun
    This is somewhat off-topic, but I was just reading some Yahoo user reviews about this movie, and I got to this one... ...umm, when did Hollywood get into the business of promoting good morals??? And, back on topic... The last two mainstream movies that I have watched have had gay male couples in them - not the main characters, but fairly prominent. And I have heard no controversy over either of those movies. (I didn't even know that there would be gay couples in them before I saw them, because it wasn't shown in the ads.) What is it that makes "Brokeback Mountain" so controversial? Is it because it shows some steamier scenes between the guys, or is it because they are cowboys? I haven't seen the movie yet, so I'm just wondering what makes it different than other movies that have had gay couples in them. I may have to wait until it's out on DVD, because it's not showing near where I live.
  19. Shotgun
    AUSTIN is on that list??!! I would expect Austin to make the list of the top 20 nicest cities for homeless... unless there have been some significant changes in the last 5 years since I moved away... When I lived there, it sort of seemed like the homeless capital of the world, but maybe the city decided to stop being so tolerant of it... (?)
  20. Shotgun
    Just be glad you don't feel like Keely tonight. I had to do it again too, and this one was funnier... If You Can't Beat Keely, Join Keely.
  21. Shotgun
    Wait Till We Get Our Keely On You.
  22. Shotgun
    Umm... thanks, Jeanne... Now I guess I just need to suck down a bit of Jim Beam... to get the, umm, creative juices flowing and all...
  23. Shotgun
    You got your capital letters reversed. I like bush, not Bush.
  24. Shotgun
    The "dragging his ass back home" is the most likely situation that will allow you to stop hearing the child screaming. I have watched parents hitting their children in public because they were screaming, and - not so surprisingly - the hitting doesn't seem to make a child scream any less.
  25. Shotgun
    True...