Reflections for today

I headed into work late today. I've been very tired the past 3 days and after getting the kids up and started toward school headed back to bed. I didn't need to catch whatever my wife had yesterday.

So I walked to the bus stop at a later time than normal and noticed all the kids waiting for school buses. I'm wondering where the heck they came from since I've never seen that many teenage kids in the neighborhood during the summer days. Of course, I don't hang around street corners during the day so I suppose I miss a lot. I don't get teenagers catching a bus at 8:45 and k-8 walking in the cold between 6:30 - 7:45. And at 12 deg. F, these teenagers were not wearing coats! I walked by in my winter coat with gloves and hat firmly in place. I'm getting old.

Blogs
It's very interesting now that I've started a blog to go and peruse what's currently out there. From a social perspective I'm curious about the place blogs are taking in our social fabric and what it might say about us living a shared experience. Some people are very detailed and very personal, more personal than in person. Some use it to post pictures. I can't imagine doing twitter, sharing thoughts every minute or so, a real-time posting of life's experience. Not for me. I don't have that kind of time for one.

I don't let my kids spend that much time on-line. My argument is I don't believe blogging ought to replace real-time interaction with all the verbal nuance and physical signs that 1-1 conversation brings. Can't happen no matter how good the emoticons can get. Using computer audio and video is a better solution but still lacks the interpersonal dimension of smelling someones bad breath. And typing is much slower than speech. Speech doesn't highlight poor spelling. But IM or blogging allows anonymous posts and perhaps removes a bit of inhibition (for better or worse) and maybe allows an individual to communicate honestly instead of being intimidated by someone else. Real people need real people and need to interact with real people and overcome real emotions to ask real people for help they can't get from a computer screen. I suppose you can form a particular type of relationship via IM not unlike pen-pals from days of old. A shadow of the real thing, but I suppose a shadow is better than nothing.

Politics
I read James Dobson is not going to vote for president if McCain is nominated for the Republicans. I might agree with some of his sentiment but it seems a poor choice for someone who advocates political participation as means to affect culture. Whoever is elected has coat-tails and I'd prefer a McCain coat-tail to a Clinton or Obama. A priest once advocated the last election that there wasn't a real pro-life candidate and that it wouldn't make any difference who was elected. My daughter politely informed him differently and now we have Chief Justice Roberts. Not a trivial coat-tail.