A Quesion of Atheist Scruples – round 8

(I missed last Tuesday on account of faulty time management. How do people busier than me keep up on their excellent blogs and still get everything accomplished?)

Same setup as other weeks. I’ll answer three Scruples questions and leave a fourth for readers. Feel free to weigh in on the others, though.

A close friend will be interviewed for a job with your employer. He asks you for a list of the questions in advance. Do you supply it?

I think most employers only interview the ones that qualify based on skills and previous experience (unless it’s seniority-based, then be ready to be passed over when someone more senior yet essentially unskilled applies for the same position). The job I have, I wouldn’t have access to a list like that anyway. All I could do is explain what kind of work it is and what there’s been for turnover. A lot of people get worried about interviews but I don’t know if prep work really can boost a person’s chances of getting the job. Confidence is one thing but overconfidence can look a bit too much like arrogance and that sort of attitude can be pretty off-putting. Don’t come across like a know-it-all and try to stay relaxed. That’s all the advice I’d be able to give. Eat a banana beforehand and smile…

You are advised to invest in a company which does well because of its monopoly but makes a poor product. You are sure to profit. Do you invest?

Sounds like Walmart. I had stock in the company while I worked there. Five years later (this year), I finally got around to telling them I’d like to sell it. I do have an RRSP plan on the go with money going toward that every month. I should be more cognizant of what my money is going toward, actually. Something to do something about down the road here. As far as the question, I think I’d pass on it.

The people who find your beloved cat injured in a ditch pay $150 for veterinary care and adopt it. You discover what happened three months later. Do you let them keep the cat?

I love cats. I grew up with transient farm cats rather than beloved pets for the most part. I’ll tell this story, though. When I was 6 or 7 I had this one called Tiger. He and I spent a lot of time together. The summer my parents invited a professional photographer to take pictures of the family in the yard, Tiger photobombed almost every sitting. Dad finally tossed the cat into the house even though he’d never before been allowed in there. For years I thought that my teasing him with a stuffed dog was the reason he buggered off but I suspect the real reason was that there weren’t any girl cats around and he had wanderlust.

If I’d found out later on that a neighbour had found him and paid for his vet visit, I might have begged Mom or Dad to have a word and see about getting him back but I think my folks would have said no. And, unless we’re talking about an expensive pedigree cat I saved up to buy and had as my companion for several years before the loss, the answer would probably still be no. By this point, the new family will have bonded with the cat and it wouldn’t feel right to barge in and ask for it back, even if I offered to pay back the money for the vet bills.

You are a politician. The people who elected you demand that you take a position on abortion which is against your personal convictions. Do you?

Corporation sued over questioning Christianity

I think I’ve created a misleading headline but here’s the story. Edward Wolfe applied for a job with the Voss Lighting Company of Lincoln, Nebraska and sailed through the first interview. On the second, he claims, is where he ran into trouble. The interviewer insisted on knowing what churches Wolfe had attended and when and where he was saved.

In the interview, Wolfe claims he was told most employees at Voss were Southern Baptist, but employees could go to any church, as long as they were “born again.”

The complaint claims the manager asked Wolfe if he would “have a problem” coming to work early, without pay, to attend Bible study.

Wolfe, a single parent who says he cannot attend church on Sundays, told lawyers the branch manager was “agitated” at his answers.

He didn’t get the job.

The suit is filed under Title VII, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it illegal to discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion.

The company, though, claims he was passed over because someone more technically qualified applied also.

Hopefully it’ll occur to me to check for an update to this one. I can’t imagine applying for a job where those kinds of questions would be asked anyway. Crazy, if you ask me.

So, what have I missed?

Everything interesting, no doubt. I go through phases where I want little to do with my computer and lack the gumption to write much of anything or read what others have been writing. Colour me lazy. I don’t mind; it’s a pretty shade of pathetic.

I should know tomorrow what’s going on with my work and if this full time position is officially assigned to someone else. Limbo is kind of a bummer. Hard to know how to plan for a future when you don’t know which one is the one you’ll be getting.

In case I do wind up working elsewhere, I bought a cheap used bicycle on Saturday that I could conceivably ride instead of walking or taking the bus. I rode it a bit the day I got it but haven’t been on it since. My own folks came up to finally meet the Man on Sunday and then we had a bit of an ice storm thing and I’m a sissy when it comes to riding in the snow and wet. If it’s nice after work today I’ll go for a ride, though. I haven’t picked up a helmet or a bell or light yet but I know I ought to get that stuff before I really spend much time around traffic. I don’t want to be one of those kinds of statistics.

I’ll see if I can motivate myself to write more again after this weekend. (I’ll be away with the Man to visit his folks for a few days.) I’m also supposed to be working on a project for my Freethinker group on “Icons, Imagery and Imagination,” a look at pareidolia and other ways believers show off their commitment to a belief system. I have to present it on April 15th. Don’t bother asking how that’s going. I can tell you now that the answer is nowhere. Clearly I need a kick in the proverbial pants.

When life gives you lemons, squeeze the s#%t out of them?

I haven’t been in the mood to update this for a few days. I’ve been mildly stressed out while waiting to hear word about my library job. I’ve been working in a full-time term for more than 3 years and the job posting finally came out to make it permanent. Unfortunately, full time with no evenings and weekends is a coveted kind of job around there so every Tomassina, Dixie and Jane applied for it and, regardless of the interview process, the most senior applicant will wind up with it. That person isn’t me. So, as of May I’ll be back to my half time hours elsewhere. Pros and cons to that, of course. More free time but less money coming to me every month. A lot less. That’s going to be quite the adjustment and that’s quite the understatement.

Maybe it’s a sign I should update my resume and look for alternatives.

Don’t be religious at work unless your work is religious

Doesn’t that sound sensible? I think that sounds sensible.

Sadly, it isn’t all that easy a guideline to follow in a world with so many religions, some of which requiring the followers follow incredibly strict dress codes and behaviour rules like mandatory prayer breaks five times a day, or avoiding certain foods at all times or fasting for weeks on end. Dealing with religion in the workplace can be tricky business, as those who study law and ethics are quick to point out.

Attorney Chad Wilson, who teaches applied ethics at UT, said the issue of religion in the workplace is almost a footnote in law school, but surprisingly is still evolving under the law.

Most of the laws protecting workers against religious harassment in the workplace stem from federal legislation passed in 1960s and ’70s, including Title VII. The laws apply on a state and local level and are not restricted to “established” religions, he said.

Most managers believe the way to avoid discrimination charges is to treat everyone in the workplace equally. While this may be possible in a homogeneous environment, sometimes it isn’t possible in the modern workplace, according to Wilson.

“Sometimes treating everyone equally means treating some people differently,” he said.

Like making room in the uniform codes for turbans or other head coverings, for example. Compromise winds up being the buzz word, but some employees and employers are more willing than others to yield. I thought there was news more recent than January about this, but I was reminded of a Christian Justice of the Peace here in Saskatchewan who was trying to claim his religious beliefs trumped the right gays had to get married and refused to do it. It’s since been deemed unconstitutional for Saskatchewan marriage commissioners to opt out of providing those services on religious grounds.

Justice Gene Anne Smith, writing a second decision for the court, noted the argument put forward by the religious commissioners could be claimed by those who sell marriage licences or rent halls for weddings.

“But more than this, it could just as easily, and with as much validity, be made by those who provide rental living accommodation to married couples [was tried by a landlord in Yellowknife a couple years ago], and even those who provide restaurant meals or entertainment to the public.

“The desire of individuals providing these services to the public to withhold the service from same-sex couples, on grounds of religious disapproval of same-sex relationships, is hardly restricted to marriage commissioners . . . It is fair to ask, then, why it is particularly important to accommodate marriage commissioners’ religious beliefs in this respect.”

Of course people have the right to follow their religions to the letter and believe whatever they have to believe in order to follow them. But when those rights are impeding on the rights of others, that’s where problems crop up – especially when someone tries to claim their rights are “more right” than the other person’s.

Knox County Law Director Joe Jarret said private and public sector managers have good reason to keep pace with changing standards associated with religious discrimination claims. Most of the laws protecting against religious discrimination are federal and carry large penalties.

Jarret cautioned against trying to make value judgments about any particular faith.

“Employers get in trouble when they question the sincerity of another’s faith,” he said.

As far as the law is concerned, practices including voodoo and Santeria are legitimate religious beliefs. Atheism is considered a form of belief and is protected, too, he said.

Jarret urged employers to try to understand and educate themselves on the variety of religions that might be found in the workplace.

Take that, American military! Atheists are soldiers, too! There shouldn’t be mandatory religious service or bibles passed out upon entry or rock concerts with a solid Christian edge or bible verses on gun sights or anything of that nature.

The article briefly notes religious schools and hospitals where the work is guided by faith-based mission statements. To me, it seems they’re in a different category in terms of this issue and I think they wind up having more rights to be discriminatory than they probably should. I’ve heard that Catholic schools would prefer to only hire Catholics who aren’t practicing gays and church-run hospitals still want the right to refuse to do abortions and other things they disagree with on bible-based grounds. I don’t think that’s at all right, but so long as other schools and hospitals are within easy reach, at least the general public isn’t forced to comply with those absurd restrictions.

There’s a big difference, though, between employers allowing for turbans and employers asking for crosses to be removed for safety purposes. The RCMP couldn’t discriminate against Sikhs by insisting only their official officer cap should be worn. Shirley Chaplin was offered a different position in the hospital, a valid option for employers according to the article. If the clothing or accoutrements will get in the way of doing business, change the way those people do the business. If it’s going to make no difference, just adapt practices and move on.

Personally, I’m glad I don’t have to be the one who worries about this type of thing. I just get to go to work, do my job, and go home again. Three cheers for manual labour…

Sounds of Sunday – 30 songs, week 6

Should I be linking to past weeks so readers can catch up on what songs I’ve listed as part of this 30 song meme, or are they all smart enough to search for Sounds of Sunday and dig them out? Work for your pleasure.

Last week it was some likes, dislikes, and a confession. This week, it’s a mix of crap:

Challenge 15 – a song that describes me? Hmm. “She Works Hard for the Money” by Donna Summer might work. Onetta is either a hooker or staffing a fitting room at Walmart:

Onetta there in the corner stand
and wonders where she is and
it’s strange to her
some people seem to have everything

Nine a.m. on the hour hand
and she’s waiting for the bell
and she’s looking real pretty
just wait for her clientele

She works hard for the money
so hard for it honey
she works hard for the money
so you better treat her right

I’ve done the latter. Pain in the ass. I didn’t work hard for my money there, though. I just showed up, did as little as I could get away with and skittered off giggling as they paid me for my laziness and overall animosity regarding the place. I don’t have the same work ethic at the library, though. I work my kiester off for those people.

Challenge 16: a song I used to love but now hate. It was easy to select “I’m Like a Bird” by Nelly Furtado. I loved that song when it came out but since she’s a Canadian singer-songwriter, and since Canadian radio stations like to play Canadian content if they can (at least 30% of it for most or all stations), it meant hearing this song 30 times a day. At least, it felt like it. I think sometimes they’d mix it up a little and play yet another single from the Barenaked Ladies, ultimately ruining those tunes for me, too.

Challenge 17: a song I hear often on the radio. I don’t listen to the radio much so this one doesn’t really apply. I can say that Tom Waits winds up playing a lot on my iPod, but that’s what happens when you manage to get a copy of (nearly) every album the man put out, plus his early work and covers which may or may not have been released with his permission. No song seems to be haunting me more than any other, though. “Down There By the Train” is playing right now, which reminded me.

Challenge 18: a song I wish I heard on the radio. Not applicable, either. For one thing, there’s Youtube. For another there’s Last.fm and Live365 and Sirius Radio, actual radio stations that encourage listening online and stations on the television besides. If you want to hear it bad enough, you can find a station that will play it, or build your own, if you have to. I could say I’d like to hear more Nizlopi, Razorlight, Camera Obscura, Animal Collective, Al Stewart, Brett Dennen, Amy Kuney, Julia Nunes, Mike Plume Band, Nick Drake.. there are all kinds of terrific artists that get missed by people who’d rather keep their stations set to Autotune FM and never hear anything truly original sounding.

Challenge 19: a song from my favourite album. I don’t really have one anymore. I guess the closest has to be from a series of albums from the Ultra Lounge collection. I’m torn between Space Capades and Bongoland. Space Capades has both “Gay Spirit” and “Satan Takes a Holiday” on it. Oh, and “Holiday for Strings” which always throws me back to hilarious ’50s ads for vacuum cleaners and clothes washers. You listen and see if you don’t agree with me there.

Bongoland only has a sweet version of “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White.” worth noting.

I just love the idea of Satan taking a holiday. Where out of hell would he want to go anyway, somewhere cold to get away from it all? Maybe he’s on a first name basis with all the penguins. No penguins in this post, but I did find Robin Cousins skating to a version of the song by some unknown band. It’s better than staring at a copy of the album cover.

It’s drafty in here: habits make our lives “shorter”?

Back in October there was an article on NPR regarding the nature of time and how we humans have devised so many ways to measure it yet still lose track of it, especially when the measuring is done by arcs, not moments.

arcs collapse time, for they make time, as measured by the ticking of a clock and the turning of pages on the calendar, irrelevant. They organize time, and everything else, according to their own requirements. The baseball player is counting time with pitches and innings; it doesn’t matter how long the game took in minutes and hours. The basketball player measures time in relation to quarters, fouls, time outs, and baskets, and so on.

How do you count time in a marriage? In a career? In a research project? What is the measure of time during an illness? Not seconds, minutes, hours, days.

So now we come to the crux: time goes faster as you get older, but this is because, as a general rule, by the time we are older, we have settled in on the story lines and narrative arcs by which we structure our lives.

As we become more skilled at a sport or job or hobby, it becomes easier to ignore the actual time required to do it. Once it’s rote, once the movements to perform those tasks are as minimal and efficient as we can make them, the less concentration is required. The less we have to concentrate, the easier it is to forget about how much time is actually passing while we’re doing those things.

Now think about everything we might do in a day and how many times we’ll repeat those actions over the course of a day, a week, a year. Think about how much of what we do every day is done because it’s a habit, all these actions, all these behaviours we’ve ceased to concentrate on because we’ve done them so many times before.

I agree with what the author suggests as a way to fix this loss of the sense of time. The best way to make time feel like it’s passing, not passing us by, is to bring new experiences into our lives as much as possible. Doing new and unfamiliar things requires we be more aware of our surroundings and our actions while we do them, which should be preferable to existing as a mindless drone.

But, as the author notes, there’s a caveat:

a habit-free existence — as I wrote last week — isn’t really possible anyway. It would be an existence without expertise, and so a life without language or meaning. It would be a beginner’s life. But the beginner is confined to the little things, to the meaningless exercises and pointless mechanics. The expert, in contrast, sees the big picture; the world opens up before the sweep of the expert’s skills. To give up one’s habits, to break free of the arcs, is to trade in one’s expertise.

You gain time, but you lose sense.

Habits are a curse, but there is no recognizably human form of life without them.

Aye, there’s the rub. I have a job that’s insanely repetitious but my skill and expertise at doing it is nothing I’d trade off. I don’t remember what it was like to be a beginner at it (I was really observant and caught on fast), but I know what a pain in the ass it can be to be a beginner now that I’ve tried training people to do parts of it. What feels obvious and intuitive and automatic to me really, really isn’t when it comes to them doing it. Oh my non-existent god…

And in terms of communication skill, I’m quite glad I got the English language sorted out early so I had time to gain expertise at expressing myself with it. I’d suck buckets trying to explain myself in French with the very little I know of that language.

I guess the key here is to find a balance between the comfortable expertise and the new adventure, whatever it winds up being.

The domestication and alienation of women

Philosophy in the Community has a lecture at the Refinery in Saskatoon tomorrow night on the topic of:

“Domestic Bliss?: The Problem of Housework and Alienation”

Is domestic labour inherently tedious, boring, and unfulfilling or is it just that way because it is underpaid and undervalued in our current capitalist economy? Is paying for domestic labour an adequate response to this devaluation? In order to answer these questions distinctions must be made between the domestic labour that is geared towards maintaining healthy, fed, and refreshed individuals (laundry, cleaning, cooking, maintaining a home) and the caring labour that takes care of dependents (children, the disabled, and the elderly). While these forms of labour have similarities, there do appear to be differences related to whether the person receiving care is unable to do the work herself. These differences will be discussed.

I wonder if there’s still a sense in feminist circles that housewives are “letting the team down” by staying home fulfilling the “traditional roles” instead of getting careers like everyone else. Are they still letting the team down by getting jobs that amount to the same workload in a career woman’s home?

It’ll be an interesting talk, methinks.

Yes, failure is the first step on the road to real success

No matter how much people crave success, the best way to improve will be to fail once in a while, and learn from what you did wrong. There’s a short article out of the Telegraph about this.

The adult world is as success-crazed as the world of GCSEs and school league tables. If you don’t own your own home, you have failed. If you have a low-paid job, you’re a loser. If you’re divorced, there is something wrong with you. If you cannot stick to your diet, but sneak down to the kitchen in the middle of the night for a biscuit, you’re a waste of space. Diversity we can tolerate, up to a point. But not failure, not in any circumstances.

Such is the social stigma attached to failure that people who have failed, for whatever reason, go into denial. They pretend everything is hunky-dory when they have just lost their job, been ditched by their girlfriend, or smashed their Peugeot into a lamp-post. They would be better taking stock of their lives and working out how to bounce back from the setback.

Failure is useful when you can build on it and improve yourself. You look at something like the self-help industry and all those books published about happiness and reward and secrets and powers and all that shit. Very few really get down to the business of saying, “Life is shit; learn how to deal with it.” Failure is shit, but if you learn how to deal with it, it can be a far greater reward than getting what you wanted the first time. At least now you’ll feel like you’ve earned it.

We should not romanticise losing. If failure were an infallible springboard for success, England would be red-hot favourites to win the next World Cup. Labour would win the next election by a landslide. The Duchess of York would become a reclusive billionaire.

But we do need to fight, tooth and nail, the perception that failure is a terminal disease, its sufferers doomed to mediocrity. So often, in every walk of life, from business to politics, it can be a wake-up call, heralding a new dawn.

My minions at work are failing left, right, and center. This means I’ve also failed in the training of them and that’s been a big smack in the face for me. My trouble is, the job is so fucking simple a trained ape could do parts of it (before ripping up the book and eating the pages) yet it’s so complicated it throws off every attempt I make to explain what to do.

All people have to do is stamp the books with the library stamp in the right places (amazingly difficult to clue in on), put the right barcode on (amazingly difficult to clue in on), put the spine label on straight and neatly (another daily fuck up), add the security strip (often problematic) and pull the cover off if it needs laminating (and that still causes mass confusion in some brains). Maybe I’ve been doing this job for so long that whatever training I got evolved into something so intuitive, it’s completely automatic to simply do what needs doing, and alter what I do on a book by book basis. I don’t even have to think about it, I just know when I need to adjust something, or report a flaw.

I don’t think they’ll ever get to that point. Is that all my fault, or is their unwillingness to devote brain time to remembering what the fuck I tell them due to the fact that they’re just casual workers looking for a few extra bucks and have no incentive to learn properly, or be diligent and observant? They’ll only come for as long as they feel like showing up, after all. These aren’t permanent positions we offer them. They’re just extra hours, and at the lowest wage going, I might add.

Next batch of trainees, should I have more, will I have learned enough about what not to do to perhaps do a better job getting them on task? Here’s hoping.

Grow up? Maybe later…

A while back I’d written a short post wondering about how long adolescence lasts and the other day I came across this incredibly long article regarding prolonged youth, as if people are creating a whole new post-adolescence thing, putting off the actual moment where adulthood (and all the responsibilities implied) sets in. I’m just quoting page 1 of this but feel free to read the other 9.

We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s.

Of course, the “nuclear family” concept is way past its prime and it’s laughable to claim that it’s something everyone should still aspire to achieve. Frankly, I’d want to argue that more households would be in better financial shape if three or more working adults were a unit instead of limiting “marriage” to two people. But maybe that’s just me (and some Mormons).

It’s been suggested that the push for industrialization is what pushed families into the so-called nuclear arrangement in the first place. (Breaks added)

The removal of productive work from the home into the factories had, of course, important consequences for all family members. It was no longer necessary for any of them to develop strong roots in any particular community or to become attached to a particular house. Instead, they became free to move about, to follow industrial development into new settlements, to “go after the jobs” wherever they might be.

Moreover, family connections became less important, as factory work became ever more rationalized and efficient. Nepotism gave way to hiring and promotion on merit alone. By the same token, the new worker, business man, or bureaucrat no longer had to take care of distant relatives. He now worked exclusively for his own small family and this made him more industrious. He could advance faster, since his income had to support only very few people.

Thus, the individual husband and father was no longer weighed down by traditions or extensive social obligations. In addition, the education of his children and the care of his aged or sick parents began to be taken over by the state.

Now that education doesn’t lead immediately to well paid careers and the definition of “elderly” has shifted a bit, since many people over 65 are capable of working far past that age should they want to, small wonder there’s an influx of late-bloomers. There’s little alternative, if you get right down to it. (Can’t open up jobs to new blood if those old buggers don’t retire, for one thing…)

Slate has an article mocking the pittance wages some companies were advertising as incentive to work for them and the overall problems with unemployment levels and productivity levels of those who do have jobs. Forbes is predicting technology will wipe out more jobs by 2020. Even something as simple as running a till at Wal-mart might get to be a hard job to find as more and more self-serve checkout machines come in. And it’s not like that was a well paying job to begin with. And technology is revolutionizing the fast food industry, too. Computers can assemble better burgers and faster. They never get the amount of mustard wrong, for one thing, or mistime how long a patty has been on the grill. And they can anticipate orders based on probability and have stuff ready before someone’s even asked for it.

Am I off topic? I don’t think so. The point I’m trying to make is that I can see why young people are delaying the grow-up part of their lives as much as they do — the joys of adulthood seem to be lacking a little these days.

Maybe their parents should be a little firmer with the boot to the ass in some cases, but I suspect they’ve rationalized that it’s better their kids be at home and earning a little than in a dump on welfare, or on the street with nothing at all. In some cases I think it’s great that parents are in a position to let their kids come home. Maybe it isn’t ideal, but the alternatives could be a hell of a lot worse.

What the Times article is ultimately about, though, is whether this is just a trend, or evidence of a mental shift in the brains of the youth, that it’s really becoming another stage of development like adolescence (an unheard of word prior to 1904) wound up being. From page 9:

if the delay in achieving adulthood is just a temporary aberration caused by passing social mores and economic gloom, it’s something to struggle through for now, maybe feeling a little sorry for the young people who had the misfortune to come of age in a recession. But if it’s a true life stage, we need to start rethinking our definition of normal development and to create systems of education, health care and social supports that take the new stage into account.

The Network on Transitions to Adulthood has been issuing reports about young people since it was formed in 1999 and often ends up recommending more support for 20-somethings. But more of what, exactly? There aren’t institutions set up to serve people in this specific age range; social services from a developmental perspective tend to disappear after adolescence.

As an aside, my cousin managed to declare bankruptcy when his student loan got unmanageable but new laws in Canada have made it a bit harder for others to do the same now. I wonder how many kids go into their loans aware of just how hard the bloody thing will be to pay back if they can’t get a job in the field they “trained” (har) for…assuming they even finish the damn course.

I don’t know what it is. Nobody really does. I suppose if people want to treat it like a stage of life, then I think people need to consider the fact that some enabling is going to go on, letting kids prolong their childhoods far past sense. At some point a person does have to throw caution to the wind and take a risk, after all. Next thing we’ll hear is that it’s totally fine if kids never get around to leaving home at all. Helicopter parents, rejoice.

I think I can see rebellion happening for many of these kids at some point, though. After university, I’d wound up home with the folks for a few years and hopped at the chance to move away when the opportunity became available. While hopping into a relationship with an internet fling wound up not being the best idea I ever had, that year with Mr. Switzerland still set me up with enough of a desire to remain independent so I never moved back again even when the thing with him flopped.

I remember being appalled at the idea of remaining with parents (and bringing the significant other into the house to live under the same roof — I had cousins who did that) but times have changed enough that what was once an aberration has become a norm. Just like single parenting, gay couples, and pretend I thought of a third example because three things always sound better than two.

Times change and attitudes will change to match them eventually. We’re born to rationalize and justify everything we do. Of course we’ll figure out a way to explain why kids still want to be kids.