Caddickisms

Apparently, I’m prejudiced.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I persisted in believing an unfounded assumption rather than taking a few minutes to find out the truth. Because of that stupidity, I missed out on some enjoyment. Luckily, I can make up for that in this case. As I’ll come back to, that’s not always true.

The name “Five for Fighting” applied to a music group immediately conjured up images of hard, driving rock music, with lots of screaming and anger. It’s just the name alone that brought that image to mind. The only music I had heard from the group at that time was “Superman (It’s Not Easy),” which is one of my favorite songs. But I persisted in my faulty image, thinking that maybe this was the song that broke their mold, and the rest of their songs were just as I imagined.

Then I heard a couple more of their songs, and they were all very nice, acoustic piano-driven songs with thoughtful lyrics and beautiful orchestration. And still I rationalized. “Maybe they do one nice song per album.”

Eventually I realized that was a stupid assumption to make and I should look into the group and see if I was missing out on something great. Still, it took a while to do anything about it. In fact, it wasn’t until I started exploring Pandora that I really found out how stupid I am.

I had a lot of my facts wrong. First off, “Five for Fighting” isn’t a group. It’s a guy. He just figured his name was harder to remember than a marketing title, and he was right. I haven’t had any trouble remembering the name (which refers to a hockey penalty) - I just associated it poorly. Which leads to my other large mistake. It’s still amazing to me that presented with nothing but music that I loved, I still had this notion that the majority of Five for Fighting’s catalog would be stuff I hated. I’ve listened to probably 15 of his songs now, and I have liked all of them. Most share the same acoustic, orchestrated, piano-led sound.

While I have a few contenders for my favorite so far, I have to give the nod to the radio hit “100 years”.

That song perfectly blends many of the elements I love. Strong rhythm piano, nice orchestration, a distinctive sound, strong solo work moving into full instrumentation, and lyrics about the passage of time and life. I’m a sucker for the “time passing” motif.

So why, presented with only music that I love, did I persist in my prejudiced viewpoint? Ignorance. Ignorance is at the heart of all prejudice.

There are people who hate others based only on their race. They don’t get to know the people or what they stand for at all - they simply believe their prejudiced views, despite evidence to the contrary. The same applies to religion and politics. There are Republicans who recoil at anything labeled “Democrat” without any knowledge of the message’s content. Likewise, there are Democrats who cringe at anything to come out of a Republican’s mouth, simply because a Republican said it, with no regard for the content of the statement (or its context).

This problem of prejudice is exacerbated by the sound-bite driven, attention-deficit guided media coverage that focuses on isolated incidents or statements with no regard to context, frequently presenting a misleading, or even wholly inaccurate, picture.

Don’t allow prejudice to guide you. Don’t be ignorant. Don’t assume that you know; know that you know. Find out the truth. You don’t have to agree with it, but discover the truth. Unlike choosing which music group to listen to, some choices can have lasting and dangerous consequences.

And on your way out, take a listen to this lesser known Five for Fighting song that I discovered after I started paying attention.

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Why Religion is an Important Part of Personal Finance ∞ Get Rich Slowly

The topic of the linked post has (almost) nothing to do with my post here. It’s the comments that I want to point out. Here’s a synopsis of the situation:

Get Rich Slowly is a personal finance blog (and a pretty good one… I’d encourage you to subscribe). Some months ago, JD, the author, went on vacation and had some guest posters fill in for him. One of those authors (from the FreeMoneyFinance site… another decent personal finance blog) stated his views on the way your religious beliefs (focusing on Christianity, since he is a Christian) can inform and guide your approach to personal finance. The article itself makes it clear that JD not only didn’t write the post, but believes that religion has no bearing on personal finance. To my knowledge, it’s the only post on the site that even mentions religion.

All well and good… JD made his position known and allowed a counterpoint article to appear on his site.

We all know religion is a hot-button issue. I expected to see some mocking comments below the post, and some mocking replies. What surprised me were the people who got truly upset - including people who immediately jumped out and unsubscribed from the feed, citing this post as the sole reason in an otherwise perfect blog. Wow… that’s pretty sensitive. If you’re jumping ship because a guest poster writes one post that you disagree with, however vehemently, and you’re cool with every other item on the site, you have got an incredibly thin skin. As one commenter noted, that rounds off to 0.0% of the posts that you find offensive.

Seems a bit disingenuous of those same people to proclaim themselves to be the ones basing their life decisions on rational thought.

Technorati Tags: religion, personal finance, controversy

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Unions had their day. They were a good idea when the worker was truly being exploited. These days, there are still areas where a union is probably useful, but for the most part I don’t think they’re worth it and they cause more problems than they are worth.

Here’s a simple example of how unions caused a stupid problem. Years ago, I was travelling in New York. On my way back to the hotel after work, I stopped and got some food to take back to my room. When I got there, I realized that they didn’t give me a fork. So I went down to the lobby and asked if they could give me a fork to use. The guy behind the desk said “sure” and went to the back to get one. When he came back, he apologized, embarrassed, and explained that he couldn’t give me a fork. He wasn’t allowed, he said, because union rules dictated that a union worker had to bring the fork to my room. Remember, I’m standing right there, and could get the fork in seconds, but they want to waste 15 minutes while I and a union server both go up to my room. Then he said that it would also cost me a $2 delivery charge - for a fork!

So instead of that stupidity I ended up going around the corner to a nearby take-out restaurant and grabbed a plastic fork. No problems.

The stupidity of this example of implementing union rules has stuck with me, and has for years colored my response to room service specifically, and other union service workers more generally. I don’t tip nearly as well as I used to, for example, even if I’m on an expense account.

Technorati Tags: unions, room service, gratuity, hotels

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Why Americans love to shoplift meat. - By Brendan I. Koerner - Slate Magazine

Meat is the #1 item shoplifted from grocery stores. That has got to be one of the weirdest statistics I’ve come across. And it seems the majority are doing it just because they “feel they deserve it.”

There is a serious problem with entitlement in this country. Too many people feel they deserve something more than they have earned. That just seems to be a basic truth in America today. It is true that some people are disadvantaged, or simply being taken advantage of, and should be getting more than they are, but seriously, that’s not who we’re talking about here (emphasis is mine):

Though men and women shoplift in equal numbers, such aspirational meatlifters are most likely to be gainfully employed women between 35 and 54, according to a 2005 University of Florida study; men prefer to lift Tylenol or batteries, often for resale and often to support a drug or alcohol habit.

So these people grab a better piece of meat and risk fines or jail time just because they don’t want to shell out the extra $2.50 (or whatever it is) to upgrade their entree. It’s not like they can’t afford it, they just don’t feel like paying it. To those people I say: “At what age did your parents drop you on your head?”

I really don’t get it. These aren’t kids getting a thrill out of seeing if they can get away with it. This stuff isn’t being sold to make a profit. There isn’t even any significantly better nutritional value in this theft. The only possible motivation I can come up with is ego. But there should be some associated feeling of guilt here which would to some degree counteract the ego boost, too.

At least I understand the risk/reward ratio of some theft (which isn’t to say I condone it - I just understand it). But this one boggles my mind. If anyone who has committed this crime, or attempted to, happens to read this, please, I beg you, explain to me how you are not a complete and total moron.

Technorati Tags: groceries, crime, stupidity

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Here’s something to keep in mind…

If you’re ever cooking a frozen dinner in the oven, don’t reach in and pull it out without oven mitts on. The plastic container gets hot, too.

Not that I know anyone who’s done that lately. It just … uh… popped into my head. Yeah. That’s the ticket…

Technorati Tags: stupidity, safety, Jon Lovitz

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People need to learn how to drive.

I was in a traffic jam this morning in the right lane of the highway. Dead stop. I was not happy.

Meanwhile, in the left lane, people were moving at about 20-30mph. This confused me. After a few minutes I found a break in the left lane traffic and I managed to move over and get going. Then I finally reached a sign that described the problem: “Left Lane Closed 2 miles.”

Now I finally understood the stupidity of your average driver. These people in the right lane were sitting in a 3.5 mile one lane parking lot because they didn’t understand the simple rule “Use both lanes to merge point.” As I travelled down the left lane, from time to time someone would stop to try to merge into the right lane—still over a mile from the merge point. Whatever… that’s just one less person driving slow in front of me.

Eventually, I approached the merge point, alone in the left lane. I matched the speed of the right lane traffic (moving finally, albeit slowly), put on my turn signal, and tried to find a spot to merge. The car I was going to merge in front of decided he wanted to be first and sped up to get in front of me. That’s fine, I figured, I’d just get behind him. But then he slowed down right next to me, intentionally blocking me out. So I kept slowing down further, and he slowed as well, blocking me until I was almost on top of the cones. Apparently satisfied with himself, he continued, and I still got in behind him. After we got through the 20 feet of construction area, I pulled back into the left lane and passed him, and received a rather rude gesture from the driver (hidden from the kids in his back seat).

While I understand that he was most likely not in a great mood from sitting there in that traffic for so long, there are a few things that bother me about this.

1. There was a backup over 3 miles long for a 20 foot stretch of single lane restriction.
2. People voluntarily sat in that line when there was an alternative.
3. I get flipped off because I was too smart to wait 15-20 minutes to move 3 miles.

Some people (including the guy in that car, probably) are going to say that I was rude for driving past all those people and “cutting in line.” After all, we’re all taught in school not to cut in line, right? To those people I say, nice sentiment, really wrong application.

I have no problem waiting my turn*. But I see no reason to sit there when there is an alternative. And if other people had done the same, there probably wouldn’t have been a 20 minute wait for the people in the right lane. Instead of me getting through almost immediately, there would have been maybe a 1/2 mile backup in both lanes and everyone would have gotten through with a minimal wait.

Actually, if people would truly be civil to each other and take turns, there would barely be a backup at all. Traffic would keep moving, slowly, because one lane wouldn’t have to stop to account for three people trying to get through in the other lane without a break.

So what conclusions can we draw from this?

a. People are rude.

b. People are stupid.

c. Stupid people don’t like to be proven stupid.

———-

* okay, that’s not really true. It does bother me. But I am willing to endure it.

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