Fortunately no conservative constructs have ever been abused... couldn't resist - back to the topic

In some cases, it was much worse before. In the 1980's, at the place where I worked, we had our first gender harassment seminars.

It quickly turned surreal. Your example of how the woman dresses was spot-on. The gender harassment rep told us that it was very dangerous to compliment a woman regarding any physical matter. That telling her "Those earrings are nice" was okay, but saying you look great in those earrings was skirting the edges of harassment.

Then when a man asked what the definition of sexual harassment was, she said "Sexual harassment is whatever a woman says it is". You could have heard the proverbial pin drop.

This draconian interpretation started a years long mess, where the men actively avoided all the women. Male supervisors would not engage 1 on 1 with female staff - there would always be at least one other person. Men quit talking to or socializing with women.

And the women absolutely hated it. Some of the ladies I worked with were dirty minded and flirtacious enough to make me blush some times, and the men were avoiding them like the plague.

One of the machinists had a nice photo of a young lady in a cheerleader outfit on his toolbox. A woman took offense to it, and he was told to take it down. It was his daughter. The pathetic part was this estrangement only alienated normal guys. The men who were actually harassing women still did all the same things, blocking doorways so the woman had to brush up against them, "accidentally" touching them in the places you might expect, they just kept on keepin' on.

Fortunately, calmer, more rational heads saw what had been created, and modified the rules. Instead of treating all men as rapists who just hadn't been caught yet, they focused on the guys - and women who were the real problem.

In the end, it did help, although a lot of the older guys were pretty set in their ways, and never did socilize much with the female staff.

I brought up the question one time, if a man avoids all contact with women in the workplace - except for the minimum to get work done - in order to not be accused of harassment, and the women know he avoids them because of that, is his avoidance sexual harassment?

This is beginning to sound like a job for Powdered Toast Man.

A Nickel-Metal Hydride mouse?

Dude, you should use Litioum Ion batteries in that thing!

Are you ready for your children to not have living Grandparents? Are you ready to be in your declining years, dependent upon them when they are trying to raise their own families.

And finally, if there is one thing that I have discovered about those who delay - Money is number one. Your self centeredness is number two. Children alomst never think of money. Yours will probably find it to be the metric of your love.

Then again, you might be the exception.

You sound like my sisters, and my wife's brothers and sister.

In both cases, they tossed off any responsibility for any of our parents, who managed to all die off within 7 years. So it was my wife and I who cared for them.

Anyhow, the siblings were surprised when my wife and I got the lion's share of all the inheritances.

The irony is that I'd told all the parents that I didn't like dead people's money, and our siblings are all about money.

Perhaps your parents will end up feeling the same about you.

For some years now, way too many people are adopting the concept that they will live forever. Just about the time that my son got out of high school, my parents and my wife's parents started downhill, and needed a lot of help. If we were still raising our child, especially if he were pretty young at the time, it would have been a nightmare, and it was bad enough as it was.

We see this staying around forever disorder in wide ranging areas, from the old parenting trend, to people figuring they'll start saving for retirement tomorrow. Always tomorrow. But we should be out of that stage about the time we graduate from college.

I was a lot poorer when we started our family. Doing okay, but still a lot less money. My son has never once mentioned about how much he appreciated the financial security I provided. He often talks about how much he enjoyed when we both played on the same hockey team together.

Yes, because providing well is the only metric in raising children

Let us say, the woman makes the choice to delay having her children until age 50.

So when the child is in college, she is 70. Since their seems to be a 5-10 year difference in age between wives and husbands, daddy might be in his 80's or even dead by that time. Of course this might not matter if the woman does not need a man.

So here we have an 80 year old woman, with 30 year old children.

They might visit you in the nursing home. Maybe. and when your femal child makes your smart choice, you figure you will be around at 100 when she decides the time is right to have children.

That won't be the only thing your well provided for children will miss out on. Their grandparents stand a pretty good chance of being dead. You will not have the energy to interact with them in the way you would if you had them at a more normal time. There is joy in having still vital parents, and even grandparents. I would not have given that up for anything. Your well provided for children will not have this joy. I played on the same adult hockey team as my son.

And your well provided for children are probably going to be burdened with taking care of you in your decline, while trying to raise families of their own. Perhaps changing their child's huggies, then your depends. You are doing your well provided for children no favors. I think having children very late on purpose is subtle cruelty, the sort of "smart idea" that only the most self centered are capable of doing.

Beware of calling people assholes when you are being a smug, pretentious "The world orbit around me" person.

The crazies left the Yahoo message boards - guess they ended up here.

Moped Jesus is pissed.

Stupid argument, and your quickness to accuse tells me more about you than you know about me. But it does show that you use one attack vector of bigots, which is to hurry up and accuse the other person of bigotry. Just like when a person says, "I would never lie tyo you, the next words coming out of their moths are likely lies.

That's okay - some of my best friends are bigots.

WHOOSH

We really do need a sarcasm tag donchya think?

Seriously? you only read the last sentence that I wrote? Even then, show me where I refuted his enjoyment of the sport. Declaring enjoyment of golf as needing a high threshold for boredom is not refutation of it. I get bored very quickly, so it isn't for me.

And my exclusivity statement still holds. If he feels exclusive, and wants to be with others of similar exclusivity, then that is is right. But likewise, I find that boring.

There are some things that are rote, spelling, basic math. Other stuff, let the creativity fly.

As for standardized tests, what they do is select for proficient test takers. I forsee the day when third graders are pulling all nighters, juicing up on the red bull and Rock Star, to prepare for the tests. Just like in college.

Yeah, abandoning cursive writing will doom this country. Cursive has been dead for years. In my own case, the last time I wrote cursive was in 4th grade back in the 1960's, when I took my last test in penmanship. Might as well say that no one can write any more since we abandoned typewriters. But your ability to equate cursive writing with 15 inch golf holes does show creativity on your part.

You can do better with that than make false equivalences.

How nice and romantic. It's a pity that joining a country club, paying the greens fees, and the expense of the clubs is the only possible way to do that.

Your :

Is true enough. Although is "nice" the metric? Everyone I know who is in a Golf country club is not there because the others are "nice" - they are there for the exclusivity, the companionship of others who value being better than other people. Some were nice people, some were definitely not.

I could have joined locally, but frankly golf is a game for people with a very high boredom threshold, I like being around interesting people, not ones who just happen to be wealthy, but are bores otherwise, and I had other venues in which to network.