Oldies

1. Rant about Zakaria/Job creation
I was watching Fareed Zakaria GPS this weekend. He had an interesting debate on who creates jobs. The whole section itself was very interesting, but what I want to discuss right now is this: 
At some point on of the guest speakers said the following “You're making a moral argument as opposed to an economic argument” (This was in response to an argument that the so called risk takers are not really taking any risks, but that is besides the point I am trying to make). Later on he said “It doesn't matter whether it's moral or not, it's what's the economic cost to get those guys to walk away, to create the next Google, the next Facebook”
I guess where I am trying to get at is that it seems like I have heard this exact same argument from a lot of my republican and libertarian friends. I have also heard this argument and read this argument from politicians, journalists and commentators. And I think this clearly helps me pinpoint what it is that I so much dislike about republicans… I believe that morality should never be a different conversation. I think morality should always be part of the equation regardless of whether you are talking about economics, health care, education or anything for that matter.

2. Election night

Today I get to vote for the first time ever! To commemorate such a historic occasion I want to write down some thoughts to immortalize this day.

Not too long ago I was asked why I would be voting for Obama. Is it because he is a democrat? Do I really know what his plan is? Am I aware that he has not accomplished a lot of his promises and flat out lied?  Can I even mention anything he has done that I like? The answer to all this questions is yes.

I will vote for him because he is a democrat. I believe in their overall ideology. I consider myself lucky to have been born to parents that could give me everything I ever needed and more and thanks to them I consider that I have succeeded in life. I wish everyone had the same opportunities I did, which is why I am perfectly fine with the government lending a hand to those who want to succeed even if it means me paying some extra taxes. I am OK with a big government that will impose some regulations that will ultimately protect us as costumer and as citizens. I believe everyone should be afforded the same rights regardless of who they choose as a life partner. I find it funny that people often refer to Obama as a socialist as if it was the biggest insult and such a dirty word, however, modern socialism is not necessary Cuba and it is definitely not the Soviet Union. Some nations have managed to embrace a socialist system mixed with a free market and they happen to have the best standards of living in the world: they have the highest literacy rates, highest GDPs, best health systems.

I don’t know every detail of Obama’s plans, but I know where he stands on those things that are important to me (education, health care, environmental issues and immigration to mention  a few) . I know a lot of his previous plans went unfinished, which is why I want him to have a second term. I believe he will get a better chance to get a lot more done.

I don’t think Obama is a saint. I am aware that he is a politician. As so, I believe he has been campaigning for reelection since January of 2009. This may have something to do with some of his “broken promises” or his compromises, but that is the game that has to be played which is why I think his second term could be more successful. There is no reelection agenda and he will be freer to make decisions that will anger people who support him (I think he has been dilly dallying with the XL pipeline to avoid angering some environmental groups that are against it) . That being said I also think the opposition has a lot to do with his shortcomings. Let’s be honest here, no other president has faced an opposition that has openly admitted that their only job is to make sure Obama is a one time president. Do we need examples? The debt ceiling debacle. I can’t believe how people still blame Obama for the S&P downgrade when it was the congress who hijacked the budget and it was Obama who showed some willingness to compromise. Also, let’s not forget that Obama tried on several occasions to pass a jobs bill that got filibustered by the GOP. I often hear that Obama’s presidency has lead to the greatest number of deportations, but I don’t think this has much to do with Obama, after all, he is not the one out there hunting people down for deportation. During his presidency several states have passed very strong immigration laws that probably have a lot more to do with deportation rates. Also, immigration enforcement officials have actually sued Obama over his policy to stop deportations of the dreamers showing their unwillingness to respect his orders.

So, what has Obama done that I agree with? Well, for starters his first move as president was to end the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. You may not have heard about it, you may not care about it, but to me it is a big deal. For the last 4 years I have been working on embryonic stem cell research under a federally funded grant that has paid for my tuition and stipend. Obamacare is also a big one. I don’t think it is the ideal system, but I think it is a step in the right direction and I would hate to go back to the way things were. I particularly like the ban on pre-existing conditions and I am perfectly fine with the individual mandate being a tax. I was asked if I did not feel like Obama lied by stating the mandate would not e a tax, and I really don't. I think it is all a matter of semantics. There is the repeal of don’t ask don’t tell which I know was a democratically started policy. I think DADT was the right step towards progress at the time, but times have evolved and the policy needed to be repealed. There is the amnesty program for the dreamers. It is no dream act, but, once again, it is a step in the right direction. There is the end of the war in Iraq which was a senseless war to begin with. Those are the things I most agree with and care about.

Very briefly I need to mention that I don’t hate Romney. I just don’t agree with the republican ideology and I don’t really know what he stands for (not for the lack of trying). It would be hard for me to vote for someone who said “On day one, I will announce deficit-reduction measures that end the era of big government ushered in by President Obama” on his facebook page this morning. How can one be expected to vote for someone without a clear idea of their plan or their beliefs for that matter? For someone who at some point implemented a plan similar to Obamacare but then claims he would repeal Obamacare and then says he would only cut parts of it? Someone who says that his plan for immigration would be to make immigrant’s life so miserable that they would self-deport, but then says that he would staple a greencard to every diploma, but opposes to the dream act?

But that is enough about my reasons to vote for Obama or against Romney, and that being said, if Obama loses today I hope to wake up one of these days and find that Romney is the best version of himself. If he is not, I would hope to be proven wrong about many of the things I believe in. I wish he can indeed put people back to work and ensure everyone has a fair shot at a good life. I hope this partisan BS ends and both sides of the aisle learn to play nice and remember that they are there to make this country a better place for all their citizens (not just the 1%, not just 53%). I will understand that if Romney wins it is because the people spoke and that is what they wanted. I will never question the legitimacy of his presidency and while I will likely disagree with his plans I will give him the respect he deserves. Conversely I hope that if Obama wins we can end this birth certificate or college transcript debacle. I hope the GOP learns to play nice and work with him instead of trying to stop him every step of the way. I hope we all learn to stop rooting against a guy we disagree just for the satisfaction of being right, even if it is at the expense of the American people. 

Guilt

Despite coming back from my winter break feeling motivated, I am having a really hard time at work recently. I need to write it out to find some clarity and a way to snap out of this.

I think partly is that the working parent guilt is catching up. The crazy part is that I don’t think it comes from within me, but rather from social pressures and expectations.

So, for one, I sometimes feel bad that I don’t have that much to do at work, and yet I am here from 8-4…everything feels like I waste of time. Hopefully, things will pick up at work and I will soon be busier that I am right now and therefore the guilt of not being very productive at work, while also sending my kid to daycare will subside.

The other part is reading articles and comments from other parents regarding parenthood which leave me feeling slightly inadequate. I recently joined a group of grad school classmates that have become parents. They all talk about how hard it is not to sleep in bed with their babies, or how hard it has been to go back to work, and it makes me feel inadequate. When I went back to work I don’t remember having a hard time. I only got 6 weeks off, which sucked because it took me 4-5 to get the hang of staying home with a baby, and I had to go back very soon after that. Maybe part of it is that I had absolutely no help. Nobody cooked and brought me any food, my mom was there for the first week, which actually ended up being stressful for me due to the relationship I had with her at the moment. On top of it, she stared at me while I tried to breastfeed to make sure I was doing it right, never cooked for me, always took the baby away from me or told me I was holding her wrong, criticized me for not getting my hair brushed or makeup on…and we actually ended up getting into a fight. My husband’s family didn’t help either. They were actually mad at me and engaged in a full blown war over a number of things ranging from me not wanting anyone but my husband at the hospital before the baby was born, to my mom and sister being at my house when they wanted to come meet the baby. My mother in law made a few meals with explicit directions that they were just for my husband as the ingredients may cause the baby gas and the entire time I obsessed about the house being clean, laundry being done and life being in order….so in retrospective, going back was probably a lot less stressful and fun than staying home. Part of it is that by the time I had to go back, my mom came back and took care of the baby and I was able to do it gradually, so I started with a few hours a day and ended with however long I needed. Part of it was that when the time came to send her to daycare, I tried to look at it from a rational perspective, which was that they had more experience caring for babies than I did, therefore she was probably in better hands. Shortly after I went back, I started a new job at a terrible terrible place…and that was a bit harder. I remember there were days when I just lingered forever when I dropped of my daughter at daycare, or sat and play with her and the other babies for a few minutes before I left.

I just saw a petition to make maternity leave with partial pay for a whole year mandatory and ,against all my principles and core (believe me,  am shocked about this), I am completely against this. I sort of got into a debate with someone about it and the arguments for it were that “maternity leave, aside from being good for children (and therefore society), encourages mothers to go back to work after having kids - many women don't because they find leaving a 6-12 week old in daycare unthinkable and because daycare is so expensive. And women going back to work is extremely important for GDP and income tax revenue. So really it makes sense for everyone, even employers and those without kids, to expand maternity benefits”. And while it all sounds nice and good, I still could not agree with it…so I decided to analyze in a little bit more depth.

Let’s leave the maternity leave being good for children and society statement for last and concentrate on the economics of the issue. Economically, daycare doesn’t make sense if your salary is less than the cost of daycare, so this law would be financially helpful if the partial pay represents more than the difference between salary and childcare. That may be the case for a lot of low income people, but there are other ways to financially support women going back to work after having kids. The main reason that I would advocate in favor of other solutions is that a year of maternity leave would put a lot of women at a disadvantage when looking for a job. Any employee would much rather hire a man than a woman who could potentially stop working for an entire year, while still receiving a salary….and as much as I hate to admit this, I think I agree with that. I have been trying to come up with scenarios and this is the best one I can come up with….let’s say that I finish my post-doc and get a great idea that I am able to use for a start-up company. Let’s say that I am going to need clinical trials and animal studies and therefore need to hire a highly specialized employee to take care of that. I find Cindy, a recent PhD graduate with all the necessary qualifications and experience….everything is going great and then, boom, Cindy tells me she is pregnant and will be taking a whole year of maternity leave… But this is a start-up company..it is a unstable situation and I hired Cindy because of her highly specialized skills…so now, I have to find someone as specialized to replace her..Probably have to bring that person in before Cindy leaves in order to have enough time to get trained and then continue paying her and Cindy (partially) for a whole year. This in itself is a big stretch to my budget and therefore I can’t commit to hiring the other person for more than a year, upon which the poor soul has to go back to being unemployed. And what happens if after a year Cindy decides that she doesn’t want to go back to work? Do I get to ask for the money back? Wouldn’t it make more sense to maybe hire someone without highly specialized training and ask Cindy to work part-time after let’s say 12 weeks of maternity leave…. that way I can hire someone at a lower pay rate to be supervised by Cindy who gets to spend some considerable time with her baby and everything is good! Other solutions (that big companies can implement) is having subsidized in-site daycares, allowing some flexibility to telecommute when the job allows for it, and a number of other solutions that could financially and emotionally help support mothers without implying a huge loss to companies.

So, now for the part where maternity leave is good for children and therefore for society…. it just strikes a chord with me… Although it doesn’t quite say it, it implies that mothers who go back to work are not as good as mothers who stay and that children of mothers who go back to work are damaged goods. Look, I support your choice to be a stay at home mom if that is what you choose. It is your life and your priorities are different from mine, so I have no right to judge or tell you what you have to do, but all I ask is the same in return. The way I see it, there are advantages and disadvantages to both choices. In my case (from the perspective of a mother who chose to work and the daughter of a mother that worked a lot too) being a working mom instills certain values in children. My mom worked really really hard, and granted, our relationship has had some ups and downs, but her career was actually one of the things that has created a bond between us. Growing up I was so proud of my mom! She was so hardworking, and smart, and her lab was so cool, and I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. I spent so much time in her lab, and she was always able to help me with my science fair projects, and with my science classes in school! These days my work is a common topic of conversation for us and something that brings us together. When I finished my PhD, it meant the world to me to have my mom sitting during my defense and telling me how she thought my work was beautiful and she was so proud of me.

From the perspective of a mother who went back to work,  I see the advantage of making me an equal partner to my husband in all senses. Not only I feel good about the fact that I financially provide, but it has also made us equal partners in terms of childcare. My husband changes diapers, and is getting great at doing my daughter’s hair, and sometimes is in charge of bath time. If she gets sick or has a doctor’s appointment, we share the responsibility of making alternative plans. I often hear other mothers talk about how hard motherhood has been for them, and, don’t get me wrong, there have been challenges, but it has been relatively “easy” for me, and I wonder how much of that I have to attribute to the fact that my husband is more than just someone who helps….he actually shares the responsibility equally with me.

Parenting Advise

I am pretty sick or articles, blogs and studies about parenting and what methods are best to be adopted. Every time I read this I feel like I am breaking my child by choosing to go to work, not breastfeeding until they are 3, technically, not breastfeeding (exclusively pumping instead), not co-sleeping, letting self sooth, etc, etc, etc.

I have come to the following conclusion…. my mom worked, didn’t breastfeed me, didn’t co-sleep and was terribly strict with me…. if the worst case scenario is my daughter turning a little bit like me, I think I can live with that.

Seriously speaking, I try to be auto-critical and be aware of my shortcomings. I’d like to believe that they are a result of more deep seeded issues than whether my mom chose to sleep in the same room (or bed) as me when I was growing up. I think everyone’s circumstances and personalities are different and there are so many combinations of these that it is impossible to come up with a universal parenting solution. Besides, what is the outcome of being a good parent? That can also vary depending on what your priorities are. In my case, I want my child(ren) to be happy, but be good people. I want them to have a sense of responsibility and find a meaning in trying to make the world a better place. Most of those are things I can try to teach and set an example for…however, happiness is a bit trickier. I think that beyond looking at studies and reading articles, the best thing I can do to help my children be happy is to examine my life. In order to be most successful I need to be honest to myself and find the things that make me unhappy and try to find the root of such unhappiness. The beautiful thing is that I don’t have to share this with the world, so I can be completely honest and then try to apply those teaching into my parenting style…..

So, for instance… my biggest source of unhappiness is that I have a lot of insecurities. Where do these insecurities come from? Well, I think partly from being bullied as a child… which I can’t stop from happening to my kids, but I can teach them to stand up for themselves…beyond that, I can make sure that I try to minimize unnecessary criticism and praise them when they deserve to be praised. There will be times when I’ll get frustrated because they are disorganized, or not doing well in school….and I think it is important to be strict with them because at the end these are things that will help them be happy and successful, but I should never put them down. I also struggle with people. I am too critical and resentful and at the end of the day it only damages me. I can try to change that so that my kids don’t learn to hold grudges like I do, or be critical as I am. I can try to purposely say good things about other people so they learn to be positive.

So…..that is the rant of the day. Sometimes I think I need to stay away from parenting articles and groups….they make me just feel inadequate and bad. I need to remind myself that I am trying my best and that is what matters the most.

I am back!

Okay…..so, I took a hiatus from my blog….and a lot happened since then…. I am not sure if we can really call it hiatus, since I only posted 7 thins before, but, the blog is still there, and I have decided to write on it again…..

So, first of all, I am a mom…. I have to admit that back then I had some strong opinions about parenthood, and I ll be the first to admit that some of the things I felt or said back then came back to bite me in the ass….. But overall, most of my sentiments from back then still stand, although there may be an added perspective.

I still think people should be more careful about procreation. As expected, I really struggled during pregnancy because of the environmental and the carbon footprint my kid would have….so, I have taken some measures to, at the very least, ease my guilt. I tried the cloth diapers, but it was just not for me…however, I did find some Scandinavian diapers that claim to be like 70-80% biodegradable and have been using those since the beginning. I have not bought baby clothes, unless they come from consignment stores, and have been dressing my kid for 2 years on hand me downs. I went back to work, finished my PhD and got a post-doc, so the whole family relocated to a new city. I can sincerely say that I have barely bought any toys and did ask both families to try to exercise some control and not go overboard with gifts (this was not received with overwhelming joy, and created a whole lot of drama, but ultimately, I think ended up being sort of accepted and respected). When I do buy gifts I try to make it so they are sustainable….it is more expensive, but I much rather give one good gift than a million crappy ones.

My biggest hope for raising this child is to bring up a human being that understands how big the world is, and how there are people out there who live in circumstances we can’t even conceive. I hope this brings her a sense of responsibility and at the very least does enough with her life to not be a burden on this planet and humanity.

With that being said, sit back and enjoy as I will be posting some stuff I have written in this past years, but never posted. 

Casey Anthony

Yesterday Casey Anthony was acquitted of killing her daughter and will probably serve no more than 4 years in prison. I have still not heard or read anyone saying they agree with the decision, which means that if anyone ever reads this, I ll have a lot of people arguing against me, but I am actually sort of glad she was not found guilty.

Do I think Casey Anthony killed her daughter? yes, but I do not know for sure and I am certainly glad the jurors kept in mind that their decision was potentially a life or death decision for another human being.

What I think people need to keep in mind is that steaks were really high for this case with a guilty verdict potentially ending up in death penalty, and no real tangible evidence that demonstrated guilt. If we try to get rid of emotion and look at the evidence, it is all circumstantial. Reports of a smell coming from a car, traces of chloroform in said car and multiple internet searches for chloroform (but no proof that chloroform was used in the murder) a brand of duck tape and garbage bags that match the brands used by the family and certainly very strange behavior for a person with a missing child. All of these make you wonder, but none of it proves guilt. There were also confusing reports that, even for some of us who believe that Casey killed Caylee, cast a shadow of doubt. Why did the lady who claims to have been Casey's father's mistress testify that he mentioned it being an accident? What would her reasons be for lying? I understand the dad's reasons for denying the relationship existed, and I even understand his reasons for denying his part in a body cover up if the girl did indeed accidentally drown. All these questions that will probably never be answer make it hard for anyone to decide that Casey was guilty with a hundred percent certainty, and with even a 1% of doubt you can not take anyone to the chair.

Education

Education is an important topic that I would like to talk about, but I have so much to say that I am not sure one entry will suffice.

Today an article came out in CNN that touches 2 topics: The value of an education and the cost of education. Some of the things mentioned in this article include the fact that people with higher education degrees end up making more money than people with just high school degrees, entire nations have achieved a lot of economic growth in just one generation by promoting higher learning, and the fact that some people believe that universities hinder creativity and innovation.

I have lived in the US for 13 years and experienced education systems of 2 states. I got my high school and undergraduate degree from public schools down in Florida and I am pursuing a doctorate degree at a state-related university in Pennsylvania. I have nothing good to say about the education I got at my high school, but I guess I have to give it the benefit of the doubt because of my unusual circumstances. I came to the US from a foreign speaking country and was enrolled in a huge high school (larges graduating class in the southeast US in 2000) with a graduating class of 1200. My assigned guidance counselor barely looked at my above average grades from back home and decided that, since English was not my first language, the best thing for me would be to take easy classes. I fought this decision as much as I could, but I ended up taking classes such as Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry after having taken pre-calculus in the 10th grade back at home. I graduated with an exceptionally high GPA, but none of the basics I needed to go into an engineering school. This became painfully obvious when I started taking classes such as calculus and physics and I could see how for the rest of my peers these were refresher courses, while I struggled to keep up. It was a difficult time for me and made me completely hate school until I finally started taking the more advanced classes in my major. By then the gaps were still there, but I was finally at a point where it was easy to take a real interest in my major and decided grad school was the best option for me. The last few years were a lot of hard work and dedication. I had to make up for the fact that my grades in the first few semester were low, after all, despite all my hard work and dedication, there was a limit of how high my GPA would get. I decided to do research at school to strengthen my resume, but being a relatively new and small department, there were very few work opportunities for undergraduate students. I went outside my department and even outside my school for a while, but I made sure to have work experience, good recommendation letters and even my name in a few publications by the time I graduated. I also applied for, and on my second attempt received a research fellowship at the undergraduate level that would for sure look pretty good in my CV. I also got involved in professional societies as a board member not only for my resume, but also to take advantage of the networking opportunities that come with it. Finally I graduated with an OK GPA, high GRE scores and a good resume and I was able to get into a top 10 program in my field.

What is the point of that story? Well, there are several lessons to learn from this story. First of all, I came to my current institution thinking classes were going to be ridiculously hard. I was coming from a small, relatively new and widely unknown department to a top 10 school. What I learned really fast is that calculus and physics and chemistry are still calculus and physics and chemistry no matter where you take them. I think academically speaking I could even say I got a better education at my undergraduate institution. The reason for this would be that most of my professors were not world renowned scientists that have no time for anything, much less teaching. My graduating class was about 15 people; therefore all my higher level classes had about that many people, making education a little bit more personalized. So, what makes a program a better program? I think the answer is in the possibilities it gives its students. Needless to say my current department is enormous having at least 100 affiliated faculty members and collaborations with a number of departments within the same university. Undergraduate students are REQUIRED to intern at one of the labs for at least one of the semester, so they get the research experience that I had to go outside of my undergraduate department and to another university to get. Networking opportunities are tremendous and if the students decide to take advantage of all that is offered to them, they can be guaranteed a pretty successful career. That being said, college is what you decided to make out of it. You can go to a top 10 university, but if you do not recognize that you need to take advantage of that, you will get nowhere.

Going back to the original article and the comment that states that a university education hinders creativity and innovation, I have to say I partly disagree. I may be wrong, but my perspective on it is that if you are in an arts degree this may be truer than in a science and engineering environment. The way I see it, if you want to be a painter, then you need to have a talent for painting. There is only so much you can learn from going to class if you don’t really have a talent for it. In some cases classes may actually restrict artists by making them abide by some objective rules of what is proper art and what is not. I may be wrong about this but that is the way I see it. In the case of science and engineering, I think undergraduate degrees are meant to teach you the basics and provide you with some opportunities to apply them. That being said, I think the education system need a major overhaul. It is mind-blowing that we still tech classes the same way classes were taught centuries ago when lecturers mainly had to relay information to students that they could not obtain anywhere else. Today the information is at our fingertips, yet professors insist on standing out there talking about something that we could easily read in our books or computers. In science classes such as biology and chemistry, what good does it make for us to memorize the name and structure of every essential amino-acid if we do not learn how to apply this information? Furthermore, and this is a generalization that applies better to research institutions, there are few incentives for professors to get more involved in education, while the research aspect is highly rewarded. I understand that the main strength of a research institution is its research, however, a university is still mainly an educational business, where the customers are the students who are paying lots of money to get a good education and they should be entitled to do so.

If we get into the economics of education, there are many things to be said. Tuition expenses keep going up every year and the government keeps making cuts to programs that promote education as well as funding for schools and universities. I constantly struggle between what system would work better: socialism or capitalism. A socialist system typically lacks incentives for people to progress by rewarding everyone equally no matter how much they contribute to society. Capitalism, however, does not provide everyone with the same opportunities. I think education-wise it would be sensible to implement a mixed system where everyone is offered the same opportunities. That involves ensuring high standards of affordable education for everyone as well as support to lower income individuals who normally would have to pass on higher education to financially help out their families. By doing so, you are providing equal opportunity, which does not necessarily mean equal outcome. Florida is a good example of this. When I graduated from high school, graduates who finished a GPA above 3.0 and SAT above 970 are eligible for 75% tuition at any Florida state school. A GPA above 3.5 and SAT scores above 1270 made me eligible for 100% plus a stipend for school supplies. As stated earlier in this post, high school in Florida was a joke and these qualifications where not at all hard to achieve. Furthermore, tuition was around 1500-2000 dollars a semester, which even for students who did not qualify for these scholarships was a lot more affordable than universities elsewhere. Despite all the criticisms that I may have, education in FL was affordable therefore available to pretty much anyone who wants to pursue it. I may have not gotten the same education that someone at other state schools with better education systems, but I looked for opportunities to make up for this and now I am at a pretty good program.

I am not trying to say it is OK to offer a crappy education as long as it is cheap. There are many things that I would try to improve at my Alma mater. The point I am trying to make with this story is that quality education should be available to everyone to level the field; after all, it is not fair for kids to have to pay for the consequences of their parents mistakes. What you decide to do with your education will dictate your future, and I guarantee not everyone will take advantage of the opportunities (I know lots of people in Florida who decided not to go to college even though they could have) and when you don’t succeed in life you will have no one to blame but yourself.

Marriage

I was watching a show on polygamy a few nights ago, and decided It would be an awesome topic for my blog. As I was thinking about what to write, I started thinking about gay marriage and marriage in general, so I decided to mix it all together into just one entry.

Let’s begin with polygamy. I think the whole idea is a little bit strange. I don’t think it is really my cup of tea as I don’t think I could handle the jealousy aspect of things. Also, I am happily married, but it I got to admit, there are some days when I really feel like kicking my husband out of the house for a few hours so that I can get some me time. I could imagine going crazy if I had to co-exist with more than one spouse. That being said, why is it that so many people have trouble with it? I just don’t see how other people being in a polygamist marriage negatively affect me. Would I be afraid of having kids that want to become polygamist? Well, I don’t think I would encourage them to, but as long as the marriage is between consenting adults, I don’t see why not. People would try to argue that they end up having so many kids and depending on welfare and stuff…but there are also tons of monogamist couples out there that have a million kids they cannot afford. Plus, if you want to talk economics of polygamy, let’s take a look at the following. Recently I read that the average cost of maintaining a prisoner for a year is between 30 and 40 thousand dollars. This polygamy show that I was watching on TV has one husband and 4 wives. They were under investigation for polygamy in Utah and they left because they could end up serving up to 20 years in prison for the husband and 5 years for each wife. That ends up being 40 years of prison total. Let’s say that because of the nature of the crime, they end up costing only 20,000 a year (not a max security prison), well, that costs tax payers a total of 800,000 dollars. Not to mention that they have a combined total of 16 kids all of which are underage therefore would end up being taken care of by child services. It just doesn’t make any sense. Switching back to the philosophical aspect of things, I was under the impression that there was a separation between church and government, but I cannot find any non-religious reason why polygamy should be illegal (unless the marriages are not between CONSENTING ADULTS)

Now, what about gay marriages? Well, a lot of the same arguments can be used in this case. How does it affect me negatively? No idea. Would I want to have a gay child? Would not encourage it, mostly because I would know their life would be a lot harder than if they were straight, but I also think there is nothing I could do about it, after all, I think being gay is not a choice, but part of nature. For all of those who disagree with this last statement, I have actually seen two male dogs having sex, therefore it does happen, plus, if we go about what is natural by what we see in other animal species, then marriage is unnatural because very few species actually mate for life...I forgot where I was going with this… anyways, I would still love my kids the same if they were gay and I would not be one of those parents who would not let my kids play with the kids of a gay couple because that is just mean. However, the biggest argument I have about same-sex marriage is that people fail to see what gay people are asking for. People keep going on about the institution of marriage being historically between a man and a woman…blah blah blah…. Well, then call it something different. Call it a partnership or whatever else you would like it to be named, but make sure gay couples who enter into an agreement that is equivalent to a marriage agreement are afforded the same rights than a married couple. This includes being able to visit their loved ones at the hospital when they get sick, being able to make medical decisions for them if they become incapacitated, being able to make funeral arrangements for them and being able to inherit a share of their estate after their death, adding them to their insurance plans as their spouses… and many many more. Also, if we allow same-sex couples adopt, we would be giving a lot of kids the opportunity to grown and thrive in a loving family.

Anyways, I know it is not a lot of new insight into any of these subjects, but I guess I just wanted to put it up in writing. Plus I secretly hope that one of these days someone who completely disagrees with me writes a comment and gives me the opportunity to have a very open (but hopefully respectful) argument about these things. It could give me an insight on why people disagree with things I agree with (and vv)