INTERESTING: Respect is missing for powerful women

Friday, March 2, 2012

TIP OF THE HAT TO THE IOWA NEPHEW-IN-LAW

http://espn.go.com/espnw/commentary/7601977/connecticut-huskies-prove-weekend-warriors-no-match-elite-women

Weekend warriors no match for elite women
Feb 22  
By Adena Andrews

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Earlier this month, comedian Kevin Hart and a group of male friends challenged the UConn women’s basketball team to a game of five-on-five. The video has recently made the rounds on social media.

Hart, who’s so short he calls himself a “little grown man,” was confident he and his entourage could defeat the Huskies, who are ranked No. 4.

That’s right, a group of men whose cumulative collegiate basketball experience was one Division III season challenged one of the best women’s teams in the country.

And, as expected, UConn wiped the Gampel Pavilion floor with Hart and his crew. The only things that may have been bruised during the game were five male egos … and one guy who hit the ground pretty hard after being posted up by a UConn center.

As I watched the video, I laughed — at first. But then I began to seethe. These men actually thought they had a chance against these elite players. The jokes they cracked made it seem like they were surprised women could run and dribble at the same time. Maybe they didn’t get the memo about UConn’s historic 90-game winning streak that ended last season or the 99-game home streak that ended last week.

They may also have just learned women do more than cook, clean and raise children. They are allowed to vote and play sports.

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Some players “looked like they might have a hard time competing in a playground pickup game, dribbling the ball off their legs and running into each other on the three-man weave drill,” an Associated Press report said of the tryouts.

Their inflated male egos told them they could actually run with the big girls. Those guys are probably the same ones who sit on the couch saying, “I could beat (insert WNBA player name) in a game of one-on-one.”

They would never challenge Ray Allen to a 3-point shooting contest or claim they could box out Kevin Love. Why? Because they respect their talent. However, that same respect is missing for a woman who has also made the game her career.

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Remember Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King?

While the bell shaped curve of the physical characteristics of men and women is definitely different, it’s stupid to ignore it.

To think that women can’t be more capable at something than a man, just because they are female, is the height of stupidity.

Ever meet an Israeli woman who fought in the Seven Day War? Definitely, feminine, but had killed to protect her kibbutz. And, I have no doubt could do it again.

Ever see a mother bear with cubs? You better be using binoculars.

Ever …  well you get the idea.

That doesn’t mean that every woman can be a firefighter, a front line soldier, or a weightlifter.

To prejudge anyone is just dumb.

My wife played ball and, on at least two occasions, I saw her “spank” overconfident male friends. One of her “victims” remembered the spanking. LOL!

https://reinkefaceslife.com/2011/03/24/memories-remembering-our-girl/

She’d have gotten a good laugh out of this story.

We, as people, better wake up. Look to Africa and Asia for the stupidity they inflict on women. That’s these fools to an extreme. We need all our “human resources” working for a better world.

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INTERESTING: Writing about death of a spouse

Thursday, March 1, 2012

http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-have-your-spouse-die#ans1038733

What does it feel like to have your spouse die?

by  Betsy Megas, widow.

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Only in the last 48 hours did Scott’s spirit begin to fade. He slept, mostly, but he knew he was going. In one of his last lucid moments, he spoke candidly with me and a social worker who had come to visit. He did not feel he knew how to die, he said. I told him I didn’t think he needed to know how, that it was probably a lot like being born. It just happens naturally. And I’m pretty sure I told him I loved him, at least one last time. I don’t know that he had come to grips with it

He died around midnight, just a couple days after his 33rd birthday and three years, almost to the day, after his diagnosis. In all, we were together 15 years. I have very few regrets about the time I spent with Scott.

I don’t think I will ever forget what he looked like when he died. His head leaned to one side, his neck lacking the strength to support it. He turned pale, then blue, and it was a quiet death. That was the moment he ceased to be the person I had known. Still, it’s hard for me to recall that part, to bring it into my mind enough to write about it.

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Our Girl just stopped breathing.

I was just sitting, hopeless, helpless, waiting. Unable to switch places.

Glad that she was finally released form this vale of tears.

I kissed her again. And, hoped that it was like in the movie “Ghost” where the deceased is drawn towards a beautiful light.

Sadly, I understand how hard it was to write this.

I’m pretty sure that I’ll never wed again. We too had the conversation. I think I always won with “how could someone compare to you?” and I was sure she’d find someone better. How many soul mates can one person find in their life. I found mine.

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POLITICAL: Dependency programs are a moral hazard

Thursday, March 1, 2012

http://biggovernment.com/dturbull/2012/02/22/the-effects-of-dependency-programs-more-harm-than-help/

The Effects of Dependency Programs: More Harm than Help
by Donlyn Turnbull

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Aside from the dire economic outlook, equally important is the harm social dependence is causing for people who enter the system and become stuck.

It’s not called “in-dependency” programs for a reason.

Whoever controls your money and your choices controls you.  And when you lose that ability, you begin to stop taking responsibility for your life. Dependency programs breed more dependency and can create the same psychological effects as people involved in abusive or other severely difficult situations.

Many people assume if you are in a bad situation you will do anything to escape it.  However, the truth is, “If you feel like you aren’t in control of your destiny, you will give up and accept whatever situation you are in”.  It’s the very definition of a psychological effect proven in the 1960’s by scientist Martin Seligman, called “learned helplessness”.

When people begin to believe they can’t help themselves they eventually stop trying.

The Administration is allowing people to become fully dependent on them for their basic needs like food and access to health services, even encouraging it. The more they rely on the Government, the more Government has control of their lives and the less people feel they are capable of escaping their situation.  Without responsibility and choices, they give up.

An excellent example of this was presented in a study in 1976 by Langer and Rodin.  It showed the effects of nursing home patients who were given responsibility and choices as opposed to those “where conformity and passivity is encouraged and every whim is attended to.”  The latter dramatically declined in overall “health and well-being”.  The study was extended to homeless shelters.

When people were given both responsibility and choices they were much more likely to find work and a place to live.

A continuation of the same study showed “increased-responsibility conditions” have very positive long term effects as well.

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I remember my Mom saying to me, when I complained about this or that, “Fix it!”, “Do Something About It”, or “That’s Not My Problem”. And, heaven help me, if I said I was bored. She’d find something that I needed to do. Later in life, when “stuff happened”, as it always does, she’d say: “That’s life; deal with it.” or “Well, what are you going to DO about it?”.

I’ve made many bad decisions in my life. Done dumb things for which a price had to be paid. Squandered tons of money. Burned bridges, spilt milt, and regretted so many missed opportunities. Some, due to NOT making a conscious decision, but many due to a deliberate choice. Good decisions go bad through what I’d call bad luck. But the vast majority of my “disasters” were of my own making.

(In writing this, I wonder what “choices” I missed completely. That’s not “shoulda, coulda, and woulda!” thinking. It’s just realizing that there maybe have been “hidden” options that I’m not even aware of or just didn’t see as a choice.)

I’ve heard this before form the lady who runs a welfare to work charity in Mercer County. How the State Welfare bureaucrats want their “Clients” to stay on the dole. She has to literally retrain people to think independently. She has great success stories which just proves to me that people are beautiful when they are free of these artificial constraints.

I’ve long thought that the Gooferment shouldn’t be in the charity business. Just prevent force and fraud, and allow people to suceed or fail on their own.

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