I am, I am Super Girl, and I can do anything

Thanks to NSBN for directing me to this silly online quiz from her blog.

Your results:
You are Supergirl

Supergirl 72% Superman 70% Wonder Woman 67% Spider-Man 65% Catwoman 60% Iron Man 60% Hulk 55% Green Lantern 50% Robin 40% Batman 35% The Flash 25%

Lean, muscular and feminine. Honest and a defender of the innocent.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Soapy definition

If someone douses you with liquid soap are you then clean, or dirty?

What to eat at a funeral

So I'm reading my newest favorite blog, www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com. The cover cake wreck is a three dimensional rendering of the twin towers in NY with an emotive "We will never forget" in curlicue writing at the base of the towers. Trolling through more than 175 comments I find this curious nugget:

"In my opinion cake is normally used for celebration. (At funerals you usually see pie[.])"

True? I must admit I'm not a big fan of funerals. I express my sympathy better in writing, and my sadness in less public forums. But, of the five or six funerals I have attended, I can say for certain I've never seen cake NOR have I seen pie. I've seen plenty of deli platters and pre-fab fruit platters, and I have a vague recollection of one of those giant chocolate chip cookies decorated like a cake. And never have I heard someone say, "At funerals you see pie." What makes pie more suitable, more solemn, more commemorative than a cake? I know plenty of women (and some men) who drown their sorrows in brownies and cookies. Is there something about pie that just says, "So sorry someone died"? I don't get this comment at all.

This brings me to another question. What is it with funerals and grocery store catering? Where are all of the people who channel their grief and sadness into cooking? Why haven't they opened "Funeral Foods Catering Company" so they can make delicious food for post-funeral gatherings and wakes for the foodies who are too bereft to cook? Maybe this will be a challenge on the next Top Chef the funeral food challenge? What foods would you want to assuage your sadness at a funeral?

I'm a believer!

"I don't believe in traffic rotaries." This is a misuse of the English language that burns me the most. You don't BELIEVE in traffic rotaries? How can you not BELIEVE in them? They obviously exist, and it is likely you, the non-believer, has driven through one and found them aggravating or scary or frustrating. I think what you MEAN to say is "I don't LIKE traffic rotaries."

It is likely you, dear readers, have heard (or perhaps committed) similar misuse of the word "believe."

"I don't believe in red bean ice cream."
"I don't believe in women serving in combat roles in the military."
"I don't believe in zoos."

Most of the time, when I've heard people misuse the word "believe" what they are implying is they either don't like something, or don't endorse it. Try it. Insert the word "like" or "endorse" in any of the three phrases above. It works. And, it makes the speaker sound far more sane than your average holocaust denier.

Which leads me to my question. What is happening in our society that the weighty word "believe" has become a stand-in for the lighter word "like" or more emphatic "endorse"? Is this a natural outcome of the increasing role of the Christian right in our social life, where fundamental values and beliefs become the yardstick by which grocery store purchases and entertainment options are weighed? Is it simply a by-product of the American tendency to go to extremes in all manner of things?

Whatever the reason, I can say definitively that I don't believe in it.

Locke vs- Rousseau, or should we have traffic signs or not?

I was a political science major for about a minute when I first started college 20 years ago now. One of the assignments I remember was the development of an essay comparing and contrasting John Locke's Two Treatises on Government to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract. In my early polemic days I believed that Locke's theory was that humans are essentially good and Rousseau's theory was that humans are essentially bad.

That's not really the gist of their work, and this isn't really a post about Locke and Rousseau.

This IS a post about whether or not humans are essentially good or essentially bad. And I tend to agree with Rousseau's belief that humans are corrupted by society but good when left to their own devices. So, apparently does the European Union which has been experimenting with the elimination of traffic signs in seven towns over the last two years. The basic rationale is this: traffic signs prevent people from taking personal responsibility for civility on the road, and in fact may cause people to try to game the system and therefore drive recklessly. And, by all reports, it seems to be working. Or at least it isn't hurting.

BMG and I are in agreement that more people need to take more responsibility for their decisions. Blaming McDonald's for making you fat, blaming your parents for not teaching you how to fasten a pair of button fly jeans, and blaming mortgage companies for giving you a loan you cannot pay all indicate some level of irresponsibility when it is likely that all sides of every blame story could take more responsibility for acting in what the state of Montana calls a "safe and prudent" manner.

Which brings me to the point where BMG and I disagree. At least when it comes to Americans. I reminded him, during our discussion, that the state of Montana for a brief period had NO speed limit, and for several years had no daytime speed limit. All they had was an admonition that drivers use speeds deemed "safe and prudent" for conditions. And guess what? Average driver speeds went up, and so did traffic fatalities. Eliminating speed limits in Montana did not restore civility but rather sanctioned recklessness behind the wheel.

Driving can sometimes lead me to feel incensed because it reveals the most selfish impulses of most people (myself included). I long for a society in which it is universally understood that pulling over for an emergency response vehicle is the polite and important thing to do. Whoever is in that ambulance is in a greater rush than you. I long for a society where our reaction when we hear a gentle beep in our direction isn't an avalanche of expletives, but rather an apology for making a mistake. I'm with Rousseau on this one. Humans are corrupted by society, and it seems even more so in the great 'ol US of A. I don't trust my fellow men and women to honor the social contract. In fact, I don't believe most people even know what the social contract is. This is the crux of why I created Smart Town - to imagine a place where everyone knows and respects the social contract, where the golden rule is the prevailing rule of law, and where the needs of others are as important as the needs of oneself. I may have just moved to Hing Ham, but I long for Smart Town, where our Mayor is John Locke and we have no street signs. Hope to see you there!

Need a laugh? Visit this blog...

Oh, dear GPA! I am so grateful to you for sharing the funny Cake Wreck blog. I now share it with all of you. My only advice is to use the bathroom before you read this because you may end up wetting your pants because of the uncontrollable laughter.

"Why is it so dead around here?"

Saturday afternoon BMG and I settled into a sidewalk cafe' in what appeared to be a trendy part of Providence, RI. We were being served "High Cheese" (wine, cheese, sausage and pate) at a restaurant that adjoined a gourmet food shop. A high end shoe store and home goods store were across the street. It was the kind of retail district that, if situated in Cambridge, would have been bustling 24/7. In Providence, there was no one to be seen.

"Why is it so dead around here?" I asked curiously.

BMG pointed across the street and drew my attention to the following sign. "That may be why," he said sagely, with a twinkle in his blue eyes.


"Oh. It is dead around here, because everyone around here is dead," was my amused reply. I returned my attention to the cheese plate, which featured a Morbier, a soft cheese marked by a thin vein of ash running through its center. Raising an eyebrow I looked up at BMG. He shrugged, raised his glass of beer in a toast, and we ate.