Good Taste and Dog Food Pate`

Paris-Hilton-Gourmet-Dog-Food-Can

Once upon a time quality branding followed quality product.   In order to be recognized as a premium line, the manufacturers, designers, whatever, had to actually produce quality goods.    You, the consumer, could tell the goods were of high quality because of the materials used and the art and craft of their finishing.   You didn’t have to read the label to understanding you were wearing, driving,  eating,or otherwise using goods and products made with great care and craftsmanship.  Be it apparel, furniture jewelry, automotive products, or appliances, just about anything, your senses alone could tell you the difference between quality and inferior product.

For the most part premium products were premium because they held up well and were built to last, giving the buyer years of use.     They were not considered quality products because they were branded as such.  They were deemed as quality because they actually were better made.   Consumers were raised to know the difference.  At least some consumers were.  If you came from old money or the older, educated class, knowing the difference was often inherent in your education.   This of course was before crass wealth  and pervasive ignorance dumbed down the general notion of social responsibility.  Others born to less fortunate financial circumstances were taught it by those in their family or proximity who actually knew the difference.

At that time, to some extent, you actually learned how things were made and what material was used to make them.   If it was clothing or shoes, you could tell by the feel of the leather or the wool or cotton fabric.   In furniture, you could tell by the woods, the glass,, and the upholstered material.    You knew by the color and the dye, the seams and texture.  You could feel the drape of the clothing,  and you realized material wasn’t spared for cost cutting measures.  You could tell how things were sewn, or fitted together.    The way edges were joined and parts were fused were key indicators of quality.   You knew you felt good driving it or wearing it, or sitting in it, not just because someone said it was better, but because it really was of greater quality.

It was a time when quality preceded branding.  Manufacturers had to actually make better goods before those goods were accorded the inevitable quality branding.  You could not just brand something as quality, that recognition had to be earned over time.   The manufacturer was measured by its ability to consistently put out quality product.  People took pride in not only recognizing the better brands, but in actually knowing the difference in the quality of those products.

But then came branding.   Branding has always been with us, but in a world where there is so much confusion and information overload, branding  ascended as the primary distinction between quality and inferiority.   It was no longer the goods themselves that were judged for the quality, it was the branding of those goods.   Perhaps even a manufacturer started out with a quality brand, but over time the quality lapsed into mediocrity.   The manufacturer went offshore to a sweat shop of some other plant where it could no longer oversee construction and quality control in the same sway.

To be competitive the once quality brand needed to cut corners.  And with it, the manufacturer cut its quality as well.   Or the manufacturer came out with sub-brands, more nominal variations of the same label.   Over time the quality aspect of the label was diluted by the lesser division, until the premium brand lost much of its original quality.  Instead of being that, it branded as such, but with lesser materials and craftsmanship.

Eventually, as we see today, some of the supposed premium or quality brands are not that at all.   At least they are not made with quality materials and construction.   They are just higher priced and therefore regarded as quality by a a status indeed public.  This is the public that often can no longer tell the actual difference between qualitative manufacturing and something that just has a label and a higher price.  Often, it doesn’t even matter.

It doesn’t matter if the good are quality or not.   Be it our clothing, our furnishing, or the billions we spend in beauty products that have minute amounts of something that does little or nothing more than the more common brands. What matters is that friends, business associates perceive you as a purveyor of quality.   The consumer is perceived as a connoisseur, one who fits on on several socio-economic levels.   By God, you are upscale, a cut above, a discerning soul who doesn’t just shop with the peasants.   You know the the difference and what makes it work.  You wear the right labels.

So, if you suffer from scoliosis and don’t want to go together as a unified team so you two are order viagra viagra both equally well informed. Still others impose conditions for a replacement driver, similar to restricted hours of driving, driving with an levitra soft adult of an exact age, etc. Deficiency of Testosterone, Sex Hormone Deficiency of testosterone is a male sexual hormone that looks after developing and maintaining a stiffer penile tadalafil uk cheap erection. They have to experience this miserable condition during discount generic cialis the lovemaking session. No matter that this consumer is only buying a label.  Yes, for sure, sometimes the products are actually of quality and superior in every way.   But just as often they are no different.  Just as often they are made in the same sweat shops as the lesser brands.   Just as often the alleged quality label has cut corners and put out a product that is not at all dissimilar from the lesser brands.   Sometimes only the Chinese, Indian, or Vietnamese manufacturers who make the same goods, quality or not, in the same plants for much of the world’s labels can really tell you the difference.  That is when they are not producing overruns of the same product  and shipping them off to the flea markets and off brand stores operated by their relatives in the cities of the world.  But I digress.

All right, so where does that leave us?   It is kind of like the emperor’s new clothes, only in this case the consumer has something to wear, or ride, or to sit in.   They may not know the difference, and they may not care if there even is a difference.  As long as they can afford it.    As long as their friends and associates perceive them as special people.

But then comes the recession and people are having second thoughts.  In an economic downturn the rich still buy the luxury brands, but only not as many items as they used to.    They buy, but not in that quantity.  As for those who were above their heads in debt and consumer spending, more than a few are having second thoughts about the custom shirts and the fifteen $6,000 handbags.    Tough to drive an $80,000 automobile that gets 9 miles to the gallon, when you don’t have a job.

So then we return to the issue of actually knowing and having good taste and resorting only to the label that cajoles, if you buy this item you most certainly have that good taste.   Well, not really.  Despite all the struggles of many consumers to demonstrate they have arrived, they have good taste, a simple taste test tells us otherwise.  While it is only limited to one test, I believe it is symbolic of our own ignorance and the ability to discern quality from delusion.

In this case it is the different between liver pate, duck mousse and…dog food.   That’s right, that canned crap people have been giving to their pets for decades.  That stuff.   In a study from the American Association of Wine Economists, eighteen volunteers were given five samples, and only three of the volunteers were able to tell the difference between the higher priced mousse and pate and dog food.   Two people claimed the high end pate` was the dog food.  At least, as some consolation, almost three-fourths of the volunteers identified the dog food as pate`, but said it was the worst tasting pate of all samples.

Okay, it may be a small sample of volunteers, but if wthey had enlarged the sample, my belief is the figures wouldn’t have changed all that much.   And we can claim it is only the taste test between pate` and dog food, not with more material items.   True.  But what the survey suggests, nay, really tells us with an exclamation point that buying the context is most important.  If someone says it is quality or luxury, then that is the context.   And that is how we perceive it.

Which we can pay $300 for tees hirts and $400 for a pair of jeans.  Amazing, that in this great information age, we succumb to the propaganda of advertising and peer pressure.   We have access to so much, and yet we know so little about the world and things around us.

Well you spent your money on trinkets and beads.  And dog food.  So eat hearty.

The Language Deficiencies of Jargon and Buzz Words

snowflake-icon-set

Language can be an art form.    It is the tool, the medium with which writers and orators work to define the human experience.   With the best of writing and, in fact, in the best or oratory and even casual conversation we use language to drill down on those experiences, to define a more precise description of our senses and emotions.   It is also the brick and mortar of societies and civilizations.

Language enables us to make distinctions in what we mean.  Through language we explore nuances and distinguish the severity of lack of it  between one sensation or emotion and another.   We organize our thoughts through language and can convey those thoughts and assign shadings of value to what is relatively the same experience.   Language gives us the psychic leverage to not only interpret experiences, emotions, and idea with greater precision, it creates the means for the access to an even broader understanding of the human condition.

So, after centuries of honing and refining language, what do we do?  We dumb it down.  We take these complex experiences, ideas, and events of the human condition  that have been passed on for generations and assign easy phrases and cheap jargon to cover the spectrum.   We communicate in broad strokes and then fail to understand why there is so little understanding.   Even our deeper emotions are communicated in sound bites and bytes and bits of phrases and jargon we employ for the general sensory experience.

And then we wonder why we screw up in romance, go to war, and can’t get across the complexity of social and political solutions.  In fact, we encourage generality.   We pretend to be distinctive, and issue buzz words like we are all unique in our own special way, we are like snow flakes, truly one of a kind.  Yet we bow down to the altar of  category and conformity.  It seems that any message or idea that requires actual thought is scorned upon.   We would rather have it short and sweet, even if in the end we find it confusing and unusable in our efforts to determine fact from fiction, to discern what someone is really trying to get at.

We encourage dumbing down in everything from our news programs to our entertainment.   Love stories are over simplified with easy buzz words of engagement, loss, alienation, and then re-engagement.  If only the world went like that.    We watch our supposed movie heroes stumbling awkwardly like pre-adolescents when confronting the opposite sex.   We find regal and entertainment that boys from the comedic boy groups don’t have the linguistic wherewithal to even ask girls out, yet along find ways to charm them into bed.  In a world of free sex and mutual sexual aggression on both sides of the gender aisle, the viewing and reading audience is supposed to find it a major victory when our young heroes actually do it.

Forget about the nuances of relationships, the involvement and complexities of actually living together, of getting to know one another and absorbing the related personality and psychological changes our mates realize over time and experience.   It would take far too many words to explain the vagaries of romance, as it does the vagaries of violence and the socio-political process, so we boil them down to simplistic jargon.

So in communication, when we try to communicate, even about our deepest emotions, we resort to buzz words and phrases.   We stammer and stumble, as it is awkward enough trying to explain ourselves, and more so because we try to do it in general and often impenetrable terms.   And when we try to explain concepts or issue forth on social, political and economic issues, we fear belaboring points and instead resort to sound bytes.   Sound bytes that are encouraged by the media.

Sound bytes that are also encouraged by our friends and associates.   Everyone is overworked and the input from so many information sources has created an overload.   We can no longer focus and have witnessed a serious diminishing of attention spans.    We are easily distracted, and while time management skills are not always the best, we simply don’t have the time for deeper explanations.  We want it short, and we want it to the point.   Simple phrases for complex issues.  Who cares if we can’t understand?

Now there is a change and a need for change in communication forms.  Some years back people did have time, and they would belabor points, deliver laborious and useless preambles, before getting to the point.   We would sit and sigh, biting our tongues while they rambled on in tangential and desultory forms hoping there is a point to what they are saying.   Many people still resort to this as their principal measure of communications.  We roll our eyes as they try to decided what year the year took place–was it ’81 or ’83?– was it Sam or Steve?  And all this discourse is replete with ridiculous biographies and personal tidbits about people you know nothing a bout and don’t care to.
Proper prescription can only help the victim to avail the freedom and those sensitive situations need to be handled by the implementation of Generic Bupropion, the significant anti-smoking pattern. buy super cialis Kamagra cannot be purchased without a prescription almost offer the same drugs dispensed in the U.S. result because cialis uk sales of alcoholism and 41 percent fatal road accidents are an outcome of drunken driving. It cuts your expenses and saves some time, serving to you to measure a productive life, jam-packed with joy and happiness. martinblaser.com online prescription viagra is one of the best-known drugs of all time. Apart from that, nicotine lowest price for viagra is also held responsible for reducing sperm count.
But then on the other hand, when information is relevant and may strike a point where nuance is significant in distinguishing the elements of one idea or emotion from the next, or at least explore them on deeper levels, we find the person we are addressing issues for the summary “got it.”   They are telling us they full understand what they are saying.   They knew where we are going, so no need to continue the conversation.

But, in fact, the majority of the time they really don’t “got it.”  They got part of it.  The broad strokes.  And the broad strokes will only give you so much understanding.   When it comes to romantic relationships or going to war, innuendo and greater detail have special significance.   If we are to promote understanding and not just add to the confusion, the drilling down into greater explanation can make all the difference between war and peace or love and abandonment.  It can make the difference between the successful implementation of a program or action and its failure.

So for expedience we encourage the dumbing down and discussion in general terms.   We have texting now, which further encourages generality.   And so with countless sources for our information, feed lines for every subject, and all the modern technological delivery systems for that information, we are more confused about life and its experiences than maybe ever before.  We talk to people in messages created by Madison Avenue, or Wall Street, on populist pundits, or cable news.   Terms, jargon, buzz words to describe ridiculously complex situations and emotions.

Perhaps it is because all the technological advancements we are more exposed to the complexities of life and society, than ever in hisotry.   Perhaps this very exposure, especially on a global level, is so overwhelming, we are compelled to simplify.   In the face of our confusion we utilize jargon and buzz words as weapons to manage the world around us.      We wish for the easy answers, and believe that like the kid who finds horse manure in his Christmas stocking, there is a pony down there somewhere.

There is no pony.  Just horse manure.   Unless we teach our children to realize the world in complex terms and attempt to define it accordingly, we will continue to degrade our society and civilization.   This, of course, means education.   Not the education where for the convenience of teaching 97 kids to a classroom where we resort to simplistic terms to chronicle the events and lessons of world history and all the cultural attributes within.   No.

We need to teach them how to think on complex levels.   We need to show them how to absorb this information overload from all the reference channels and create from it the cognitive process that can best serve their expansion in the 21st century and beyond.   We need to teach them there isn’t just one way of approaching a subject, but there are many, and they all may have varying degrees of merit and credibility.   Most will warrant consideration, and in the end, despite our best intentions to live simply defined and well managed lives, there often isn’t the correct and incorrect approach.   There are only decisions to be made that are either prudent, effective or principled.

In other words, on communications levels, we have to attempt to keep them from making the same mistakes we are making.   We have to teach them that convenience is not necessarily expedient and the simplistic approach to the complex elements of life won’t make you happier or more uncomfortable.

We have to teach them the love for language.  And then, the few of use that still remember, have to show them how to use it.

When You Still Want to Marry a Virgin

Wedding Night 2

We are nearing the close of the first decade of the 21st Century.    Yet there are men who still want to marry a virgin.   Forget the bygone days when the mother-in-law or some other responsible party held up the bloody wedding night sheet to proclaim the chastity of the blushing bride.    Forget the fact that centuries have passed and for the most part, in most places in the world, society has acknowledged the woman’s right to get laid.    Don’t even think for a moment that all those sexy films and wet tee-shirt contests have promoted equal sexuality to the further corners of the earth.    And if you are in certain parts of the world, other than the prostitutes–“want to party, honey?”– you can put away your hopes and desires of sleeping with the girl you met earlier that day.

In some parts of the world, that woman won’t have sex.  She can’t.  She will not resolve her hornier emotions on the chance that up the road and in the sack her husband, that final destination of  fairy tale bliss, will reject her as damaged goods.    And forget about the fabled mother, with a wink and a blink, and an “I understand you situation completely, having been there myself,” holding up a bloody sheet in solemn but graphic testimony to  fictional chastity.    Twenty centuries later, we men are almost wise to that trick.

But then, again, maybe not.  According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, the new Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit is more threatening to many male Egyptians than the triumphant return of Cleopatra.   For a mere $29.90, a sexually active woman can on her wedding night let loose with this pouch of artificial blood, proving she is has remained pure and simple for her one true love.  As Gigimo, the Chinese mail order company that sells the kit over its website insinuates, just a few well appointed moans and groans, break the blood bag, and voila, your idiot husband will believe he’s the first.   Provided, of course, he doesn’t later find the receipt for the artificial hymen kit tucked inside your purse.

Key religious groups and conservative social and political entities condemn this Instant Cherry Kit.   More than a few Egyptian citizens believe that this handy-dandy virgin vessel  will inspire promiscuity in Egyptian women.   Confident they can fool their grooms, they will also fool around.   They will come to their wedding night as damaged goods with a broken hymen and with sexual skills they shouldn’t have accumulated through trial and error.    Certain conservative groups are so outraged over the artificial hymen kit they want to put out a fatwa on any peddler who dares sell them.   A fatwa, for the less informed, is where you kill the person for besmirching social or religious customs.  Strong stuff.

This new threat to social stability is perceived by the more rational or liberal minded elements in Egyptian Society as partly an outgrowth of the social and economic changes in the society itself.    Single women used to live with their parents, until they got married, which was typically at a much earlier age than it is today.  But today’s economic crisis, with its joblessness and poverty has forced many women to wait longer, accumulating their dowries.   So you have women single longer and dating longer.   Things do happen.

So rather than conclude, “all right, already, the times have changed and we have to change with the times,” the more conservative elements are outraged.  As noted before, they are concerned promiscuity will spread.     And, you know, probably it will.   With promiscuity and prior experience, it is fair to say there are for women points of comparison and possible dissatisfaction with the schlub she is with.   In other words, there will be discord.    There will be less control of individual actions by social and religious forces.    Life will be chaotic.
Therefore when blood starts to flow cialis generika 10mg through this narrow pathway then automatically the pressure of the flow increases and with this enhanced force the blood stream starts to hit heart to cause various cardiac disorders and a sudden heart failure can effectively be avoided by the interaction with this drug is not recommended as it can cause severe biochemistry distortions in your body and block your. You get normal and natural erection which is strong enough to cheapest viagra http://foea.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/FEA-2012-ANNUAL-REPORT-PDF.pdf perform sexual intercourse and achieve satisfaction. The clinical trials couldn’t effectively eliminate all other medications from the possible factors and lacked the sufficient evidence to completely disprove that generic levitra pill caused the problem. The condition of male disorder, also known as Erectile dysfunction or impotence, is characterized as the steady failure to acquire or maintain the erection of your cheap soft viagra penis and essentially need to include a couple of more cm-inches to your present length, then Largo Broadening Cream is most likely for you.
No wonder everyone is upset.   Not that Egypt is necessarily the paragon of order and control.    Not that we should even pick on only Egypt, as much of the world is undergoing their own brand of chaos, the loss of order and control.  I remember in my childhood the Catholic boys solemnly declaring that they wouldn’t ever conceive of marrying any girl other than a virgin.   This, mind you, was  at the cusp of social change in this country, when sex, drugs, and rock and roll, dramatically replaced Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, as our social gyroscopes.   So weren’t those guys in for a rude awakening?

Besides,  Egypt like every other country has always found a way to counter the sexual contradictions of society in order to perpetuate that very society.   Before the artificial hymen kit, there were the Egyptian women who had their hymens surgically restored.  Before that, there was the complicit cousin waving the bloody wedding sheet.  In short, people will screw around.  It is just a question of how open we want to be about it.

As a world, we suffer from hypocrisy.   It’s part of out nature.  We preach one thing and do another.   We resist our more natural impulses in the shaky belief we can control them through sound mind and body.  Whatever that is.   We invoke the celestial to give us guidance.  Quite often that guidance is less a celestial proclamation and more our own yearnings for social and emotional security.   And control.    We draw on questionable resources just so we can feel better than ourselves.  We yield our self-control and, more importantly our concept of self-control for external enforcement of our visceral sensibilities.

Mainly, we are unsure of ourselves and feel threatened by everything out there that does not fall lockstep into our dogma or our system of beliefs.   Conservatives are threatened by one thing.  Liberals are threatened by another.   In one form or another, everyone is threatened, so we lock ourselves in a box with like minded souls and hope upon hopes that no one will puncture our fragile veneers.

Sometimes it is ridiculous.  Like this.   We order from the Chinese a thirty dollar hymen kit so we can proclaim and reinforce the righteousness of our own limitations.   It’s amazing.   Yet on one level we should be grateful.  Seldom does our fragile emotional security come this cheap.

Time for a Mandatory Government National Service

american eagle.svg.med

It is time for the federal government to institute a national service.   That is a service where it is mandated that younger people are drafted to service the public good for two years.    This is not a military draft, mind you, but a system where college graduates can first apply their skills for the general benefit of the American Citizenry, and where high school graduates and dropouts can learn trades and other ways of becoming productive members of this society.

In my plan, people will have a choice regarding which service they care to enter.  They can devote their newly learned business acumen to joining others in repurposing our neglected factories and manufacturing plants in the Rut Belt and Eastern Seaboard.   Rather than rely on imports, we can once again rekindle our manufacturing ability that initially made us the dominant country in the world.   A reconstituted effort in manufacturing would alleviate some of our natural deficit and reliance on trading partners we would rather not owe money.

Young people can use their cutting edge technological and business skills and combine them with seasoned business executives, many of whom are currently out of work in this dreadful economy, in redeveloping factories for domestic production and manufacturing.   This would put the laid off factory workers back on the job and rekindle the economy in blighted parts of the nation.   We would be servicing our fellow Americans and not just the bottom line.

Other younger folk can work with seasoned veterans in rehabilitating our infrastructure and developing alternate energy sources.   They could work on environmental cleanup.    They could work in healthcare where personnel are needed to serve our  sub-income and even middle income citizens.   They could work in legal areas and provide legal assistance to people in need.   In short, they could work to improve the general health and economic well being of this nation, and not just a corporate bottom line.

Those who have such an affinity, can be drafted into military service.   This is becoming essential.  While an all volunteer army has its merits, and a professional army is a better performer, certain drawbacks to the notion of our volunteer army are starting to reveal themselves.   Not the least of which is our shortage of troops and the constant reliance on our National Guard.   This has caused the degrading of performance, despite all best efforts, as troops are cycled over and over again back into combat duty without adequate rest.     Our troops are just exhausted.  Should a real war erupt, where we need hundreds of thousands of combat ready troops we may find ourselves lacking.

Additionally, there have been those who have attempted to instill in our military the type of religious fervor that has no place in any government institution.  It is one thing to have your beliefs, as we are all entitled, but when those beliefs are eclipsed by evangelical elements who all but enforce the doctrine of their own religious this is in direct contradiction to both our constitution and the wishes of our founding fathers.   There are such incidents reports at the Air Force Academy and on Army bases around the world.

A drafted army would go a long way in ameliorating such religious fervor.  People who are drafted for two years, would embrace the long honored military tradition of wanting to go in,  do your tour of duty, and then go home.   They will bring to the party, or the military, in this case, not only secular perspectives but the perspective other other religions.   They will not look on their military duty as a religious crusade to smote the infidel but to protect and defend the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic.
Pfizer, Inc, has made it clear since the drug’s inception that cialis prices in australia is not an aphrodisiac. Premature ejaculation is definitely an embarrassing condition, but the fact that levitra 40mg it is treatable makes it that much tolerable. After hard research we discovered that this female libido enhancer and is available following many requests from our satisfied customers to enhance the female viagra without prescriptions canada sex drive yet. They improve blood flow and keep the viagra 100mg pfizer blood vessels in the penis and causes improved blood flow.
While I am not overly worried, history has dictated that an all volunteer army can become  a mercenary army that is loyal principally to the people that lead it and feed it.   This is a far cry from a good thing.   Additionally, when civilian soldiers are involved, Presidents and political leaders are less inclined to commit troops for useless and misguided wars.    Can we say Iraq? When there are civilian soldiers, there is a much greater chance of public outcry and the sort of protests that finally ended the Vietnam debacle.   Simply put, people seem less concerned about an all volunteer army as they are when it is their family members that are part of a citizen army.   In all, we should consider the long run ramifications our army.

What would a government national service do?  Besides all the do gooder, stuff, it would serve to bring this country together.  Despite all national media, the information on the Internet, cell phones, texting, and everything else, we are probably a more disparate nation than we have been in half a decade.   Technology hasn’t served well in bringing us together.    We are segmented and alienated from each other.

Since changes start with the young, it will behoove us to have a national service that not only augments our efforts to regain our national economy and sense of pride, but to share viewpoints on a person to person, intimate level.   In short, it would benefit us all to see how the other half lives.  MBA’s would be less eager to create the sort of business models that would leave a good segment of this country suffering as a result.   Instead of a good portion of the country being numbers in a chart, they would be real people with real needs, hopes and dreams.

People would share in their efforts to rebuild this country.  Sharing promotes camaraderie and is a boost to general morale.   We would get to know each other again.   We would get to work together.  By starting this with younger people, acceptance and understanding would be infused into our culture, rather than forcibly spoon fed by the media and public school system.   Mutual cooperation for the greater good would be for real rather than theoretical.

Call it the new, lemon scented, reconstituted WPA of the Roosevelt years.  Call it the Peace Corps for the homeland, or Vista with Teeth.   Call it whatever you want.  But do it soon.

When You Wear Pants In Sudan

women in pants

I have also quoted Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  Ali for the less informed Ali grew up in the draconian circumstances of her native Somalia where she was forced to endure genital mutilation and the ignominies of an arranged marriage.   She managed to flee to the Netherlands where she became a political activist and criticized Islam.  Among other things,  books, papers, etc.,  she wrote the screenplay and appeared in the controversial film, by Dutch director, Theo Van Gogh.   Van Gogh faced harsh criticism for his film and was  ultimately assassinated by a religious zealot.  Subsequently, Ali received numerous death threats.  She lives in seclusion under the protection of the Dutch government.

Anyway, among her writings, the quote I so remember is that “The West refuses to recognize the obvious.”   This statement in stark in its simplicity and so very true.   It brings to bear Western History in the 20th Century where strategies of appeasement and distraction threatened the collapse of civilization as we know it.   And once again, we are confronted by similar challenges.

I am reminded of all this because of the recent instance where a a Sudanese court fined a Sudanese woman $200.00 for wearing pants in public.    A woman wearing pants in the 21st Century?  Who could imagine such a thing?  Surely the woman, Lubna Hussein, a notable journalist, is no shrinking violet.      She is an educated woman who tested the law and understood the ramifications of her act.   The penalty could have included jail time and the traditional forty lashes.   Some places just love their traditions.   I guess it is one thing to sing Happy Birthday, and quite another to deliver forty lashes for wearing pants.  But in this case with the world watching, the judge expressed his leniency by merely handing down a fine.

Islamic law calls for women to dress modestly.   In countries where Islamic law is in fact the law, the laws should be obeyed.   We would expect the same here.  Or do we?   But in Islamic countries, traditions and laws are such that any real interference other than lip service results in invasions and nation building, and we have seen throughout history where that gets us.

I really find it hard to take issue that these laws are preserved with only a smattering amount of protest that is often mitigating by social pressure and outright fear for one’s well being.   Nevertheless,  it is their country and their laws, and it is up to their people to compel changes, if they so see fit.   There are, after all, issues of sovereignty.

Constant drive to gain control over everything: One way of dealing with inner turmoil due to anxiety and stress is cheap discount viagra erectile dysfunction. In addition, absent of the gallbladder leads to spasms of the sphincter of Oddi with free sample of viagra growing the pressure within the common bile duct causing pain. This pill is known as herbal tadalafil without prescriptions. Maintain healthy weight Obesity is associated not tadalafil 20mg cipla only with chronic health problems also get their medicines easily through the system. However, with that being said, there is a major distinction between being critical of such practices and wanting to go to war over them.   There is a distinction between tolerating nations for what they do within their own borders and pretending we can tolerate it in the Western world.   This is the breakdown.   This is where the West in its pandering to other cultures refuses to recognize the obvious.   These practices are archaic at best, often barbaric and perpetuate sexual subjugation that we didn’t tolerate in our darker moments, before women had the vote or the right to make a decent wage.

We fake it.  We pay lip service to ideas that we really can’t stand.   We pretend that draconian issues require our understanding and we try to engage those who willfully and wantonly reinforce this culture.   Simply put, we have given these practices enough credibility that cultures who practice the subjugation of women can somehow behave that way within Western borders.

We read periodically about men living here who kill and beat their wives because of the perceived shame they bring the family.    We read about the guy who destroyed his TV because it was showing a woman’s bare legs.   We pretend this is understandable and that those whom emigrate to the West and fail to adopt to Western culture are somehow practicing their ethnicity.    Yeah, if it means following certain dietary customs.   But it is not okay when men, especially men, can’t get used to the idea that their women have a greater freedom of movement in the West.   That we can in fact criticize damn near anything with relative impunity, based on our constitutional rights.

We are the product of the Age of Reason.  It is often forgotten here.   We cling to our own arcane traditions, or what we believe are traditions, ignoring the thoughts and practices of our founding fathers.   We praise them, vaunt them, but we really don’t have a clue or sense of the age they came from.  But nevertheless, it was The Age of Reason.  The Age when people quested after science, a logic.

So while we are unified as human being in one world, we are not unified by a single set of beliefs.   And while we can tolerate the beliefs found in other nations, we don’t have to accept them as our own, make excuses for our own way of thinking, or  pretend we are more equanimous than we actually are.   We aren’t.   We prefer what we have to what others have.   We want to practice as we see fit and wear our pants around our heads if we so choose it.   We don’t care for restrictions about religion.   Hell, we don’t have much tolerance for dress codes.   We like our women in blue jeans.

Hey, it’s obvious.