There's A First Time For Everything

Lizarded from navelofwine, a quiz thing, to which I am too lazy to link, and which I either butchered, got me all wrong, or sees a side of my personality that I've never met.
"Wackiness: 34/100
Rationality: 36/100
Constructiveness: 40/100
Leadership: 34/100


You are an SEDF--Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an evil genius. You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.

Your friends may find you remote and a hard nut to crack. Few of your peers know you very well--even those you have known a long time--because you have expert control of the face you put forth to the world. You prefer to observe, calculate, discern and decide. Your decisions are final, and your desire to be right is impenetrable.

You are not to be messed with. You may explode."

There's A First Time For Everything

Lizarded from navelofwine, a quiz thing, to which I am too lazy to link, and which I either butchered, got me all wrong, or sees a side of my personality that I've never met.
"Wackiness: 34/100
Rationality: 36/100
Constructiveness: 40/100
Leadership: 34/100


You are an SEDF--Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an evil genius. You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.

Your friends may find you remote and a hard nut to crack. Few of your peers know you very well--even those you have known a long time--because you have expert control of the face you put forth to the world. You prefer to observe, calculate, discern and decide. Your decisions are final, and your desire to be right is impenetrable.

You are not to be messed with. You may explode."

Conflict and Confusion Over July 4

Independance Day
One way or the other, I've been noticing two pretty different takes on July 4th this year. There's the crowd that's making a point of celebrating our country, and being patriotic and having fun with it. Then there are the people who simply include a comment of "Happy July 4" or something similar. And on the other hand, there's my mother, who says she'll celebrate July 4 when Bush is no longer in office, or Steve, who's current away message begins with: "Avoiding celebrations of oppressive nations at all costs."

In general, I tend to be pretty politically neutral, barring issues that are particularly dear to my heart (but that's idealism, not politicism, I think). July 4th has usually been more an annoyance preventing friends from coming to my birthday parties as a child to me than anything else.

There have been years when I've gone, with family, to some July 4th picnic, barbecue or other party, and more years where we've done nothing in particular. Just like my family rarely goes in for much elaborate celebration of religious holidays, we don't go in for much celebration of secular holidays either, with the exception of Thanksgiving, which is family-centered enough to make it a big deal of sorts. Religious holidays mean something to me, so I go out of my way to observe them, even when it puts me seriously out of step with my family. Secular holidays just don't seem so meaningful- I have no value system strong enough to make that effort.

It isn't that I don't want to live in the US of A. I'm happy here, and have no particular plans to move elsewhere. Nor is it that I don't agree with the current political establishment, so I'm not going to celebrate the entire nation because of it- I don't like Bush, but that if I felt strongly patriotic, I'm sure I'd celebrate anyways. But somehow, I never acquired much of an active patriotism. I feel strongly about many of the values inherent in living here, but not so much about the country itself. Perhaps that's an effect of being the child of, to quote "not-so-ex-hippies". To misuse words and borrow concepts, I'm a secular/cultural patriot. I like the United States enough, and I feel like a committed citizen I think, at least enough to spend time thinking about reasonable voting/drinking/driving/ military service ages, and the like (and occasionally longing for one of those systems Heinlein suggested where you'd have to prove reasonable adult intelligence or social responsibility or something in order to vote, but that's another story entirely, and probably insanely elitist)- but the celebration just doesn't do it for me.

___________________________________________________________________
In many ways, a thought from a conversation I had in high school comes to mind- I think that one is being a better citizen by being vocal about one's opinions and ideas, critical Or supportive, than in blindly celebrating the country. Not that there isn't a place for that too, but it doesn't seem to fit in with my way of interacting with the world.

While I'm at it- why must all the boys in my neighborhood buy firecrackers and shoot them off in the street, making tons of noise, at a building rate from a week before July 4th, and still escalating? There were perfectly good town sponsored, safe fireworks Friday night- why do they have to do their own in annoying and/or risky ways?

Conflict and Confusion Over July 4

Independance Day
One way or the other, I've been noticing two pretty different takes on July 4th this year. There's the crowd that's making a point of celebrating our country, and being patriotic and having fun with it. Then there are the people who simply include a comment of "Happy July 4" or something similar. And on the other hand, there's my mother, who says she'll celebrate July 4 when Bush is no longer in office, or Steve, who's current away message begins with: "Avoiding celebrations of oppressive nations at all costs."

In general, I tend to be pretty politically neutral, barring issues that are particularly dear to my heart (but that's idealism, not politicism, I think). July 4th has usually been more an annoyance preventing friends from coming to my birthday parties as a child to me than anything else.

There have been years when I've gone, with family, to some July 4th picnic, barbecue or other party, and more years where we've done nothing in particular. Just like my family rarely goes in for much elaborate celebration of religious holidays, we don't go in for much celebration of secular holidays either, with the exception of Thanksgiving, which is family-centered enough to make it a big deal of sorts. Religious holidays mean something to me, so I go out of my way to observe them, even when it puts me seriously out of step with my family. Secular holidays just don't seem so meaningful- I have no value system strong enough to make that effort.

It isn't that I don't want to live in the US of A. I'm happy here, and have no particular plans to move elsewhere. Nor is it that I don't agree with the current political establishment, so I'm not going to celebrate the entire nation because of it- I don't like Bush, but that if I felt strongly patriotic, I'm sure I'd celebrate anyways. But somehow, I never acquired much of an active patriotism. I feel strongly about many of the values inherent in living here, but not so much about the country itself. Perhaps that's an effect of being the child of, to quote "not-so-ex-hippies". To misuse words and borrow concepts, I'm a secular/cultural patriot. I like the United States enough, and I feel like a committed citizen I think, at least enough to spend time thinking about reasonable voting/drinking/driving/ military service ages, and the like (and occasionally longing for one of those systems Heinlein suggested where you'd have to prove reasonable adult intelligence or social responsibility or something in order to vote, but that's another story entirely, and probably insanely elitist)- but the celebration just doesn't do it for me.

___________________________________________________________________
In many ways, a thought from a conversation I had in high school comes to mind- I think that one is being a better citizen by being vocal about one's opinions and ideas, critical Or supportive, than in blindly celebrating the country. Not that there isn't a place for that too, but it doesn't seem to fit in with my way of interacting with the world.

While I'm at it- why must all the boys in my neighborhood buy firecrackers and shoot them off in the street, making tons of noise, at a building rate from a week before July 4th, and still escalating? There were perfectly good town sponsored, safe fireworks Friday night- why do they have to do their own in annoying and/or risky ways?