Raw Sewage and Gender Equality

I've been enjoying discussions on a wide range of topics with my 16-year-old daughter.  I've probably poisoned her ability to ever be an unthinking person of the Left.  Sure, she goes to a California high school and is surrounded by Leftists (even though it's a private school) and as a result she still leans towards various ideologies like catastrophic global warmenism, but I've sown enough of a seed of doubt in such topics that she'll never be able to buy it hook, line, and sinker and will be easily able to reject it one day.  She has developed an impossible to completely suppress healthy skepticism of most topics.

Lately, she's been studying various gender and racial topics and she's been suffering from some cognitive dissonance. Things like, "there should be full gender equality but if they bring back the military draft, women shouldn't get drafted."  She knows that there's something not quite right about that statement, but she just can't bring herself to buy into the concept that men and women are different.  Yet.

Our drains backed up this morning.  I'm guessing that in this situation, a male deals with the drains and the associative disgusting raw sewage at least 95% of the time.  I mopped up the pools of backed up water, got the powered drain snake out, ran it through various clean outs, and cleared the blockages (roots of course, what else?).  As I was snaking the drains my daughter was getting ready to go shopping.  I called out, "You remember that discussion we were having about gender equality the other day?  As long as it's always guys who deal with the disgusting stuff like this, the concept of complete gender equality is nothing more than a giant load of stinking BS, much like I'm finding in these drains!"

She just smiled and walked out the door, but I think the point got through.

Shake, Rattle, & Roll

It's been fun!

For those of us in San Diego, earthquakes are sort of like virtual reality motion simulator rides - except for the "virtual" and "simulator" parts. They're not strong enough to cause any damage or injury or even be particularly scary.

The big fault line that runs through Los Angeles splits about 60 miles north of here and goes around San Diego, both to the East and West. The latest earthquakes were on the Eastern (and larger) fork of the fault, about 110 miles from San Diego, in a very sparsely populated area of the Mexican and California deserts.

I'm on vacation for the next little bit, so blogging and commenting will be sporadic.

California's Woes

I like living in California and I hope to continue to be able to live in California. However, if taxes are raised enough, I will feel compelled to leave for a lower tax jurisdiction in order to better provide for my family.

California is having some serious problems governing itself. As Megan McArdle wrote:

California is completely, totally, irreparably hosed. ... You can blame Republicans who won't pass a budget, or Democrats who spend every single cent of tax money .... You can blame the initiative process, and the uneducated voters who try to vote themselves rich by picking their own pockets. Whoever is to blame, the state was bound to go broke one day, and hey, today's that day!

We had a bunch of ballot initiatives to vote on yesterday, and while I got held up and didn't make it to the polls before they closed, I would've voted with the "uneducated" majority against tax increases had I been more timely. To vote for tax increases would mean that I'd be more likely to have to move so it would seem rather pointless to me.

I feel that the voters should set the budget and then the governator and legislature should figure out how to operate within that budget. They should choose which jobs and services to cut and they should get started now. Far fewer teachers, police, firemen, bureaucrats, etc. That I'm willing to live without.