Delicious LiveJournal Links for 5-7-2010

[andrewducker]

• Soccer Player Given Strict Warning by Referee after Dying on the Field
  (tags: football funny EpicFail)
• Soviet Posters Recreated With Barbie Dolls
  (tags: design russia toys)
• NYSE, Nasdaq Cancel Some Trades at Height of Thursday's Volatility
  (tags: economy markets usa)
• Republican States have worse marriages than Democrat states.
  (tags: marriage politics usa)
• OneMillionGiraffes.com - Make giraffes, not war!
  (tags: drawing fun giraffe animals meme art)

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

"And don't do it again."

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

Oh... that link on red and blue marriages is very interesting. Particularly because I'm someone who finds many things about current red America very distressing, and yet the "way things used to be" sounds kinda idyllic, in a different-culture kind of way.

I'm glad to have had my university education, and glad to be able to wait till I'm 32 to start a family, and very glad to be married to the girl I met when I was 26 rather than the one I met when I was 18. But vast swathes of society around the world has had arranged marriages of teenagers, and it basically worked. The way things used to be as depicted in that article seems to be two teenagers who might not have ended up staying together for their lives get married young, and learn to be responsible adults and learn to love and care for each other even though they're different... that seems to have some important lessons about maturity that the modern way has lost.

(I do appreciate that there's a dark side to this idyllic picture, with a lot of domestic violence and suchlike... but there still seems to be a lot of that even in our more enlightened times.)

It seems sad that red America has only managed to hold onto half of that, and the teenage marriages half doesn't work at all when the culture of easy divorce has spread into red America despite its best efforts.

[andrewducker]

I'm not convinced that that many people in arranged marriages did learn to love and care for each other. I'd be more inclined to believe in high levels of infidelity and prostitution.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

"Milkmaids, we shall achieve high yields/
from every fodder-fed cow!"