Random Access Memories

This morning I was listening to NPR, and one of it’s Valentines-themed stories. And it was talking to two female soldiers in Iraq and how they missed their babies.

And I began wondering, why is the attraction toward children so strong in the USA? For example, at one of my previous jobs I had mentioned I wanted no children and I was flatly told “Well, you’ll be a lonely old man”. Now beyond the fact that it was a statement amazingly devoid of tact it seemed to sum up the US feelings on kids quite well.

Other modern nations don’t have this tie as strongly as we do. The USA has a much higher birth rate than Europe, Canada, Australia and 90% of other “First World” nations as a whole.

Then I started looking very closely at the countries with the lowest birth rates. The list includes Germany, Austria, Italy, Monaco, Japan, Russia, Singapore, Greece and Switzerland. You might miss the pattern here, but I found it in a list of nations ranked by intelligence. In all versions of such a list that i’ve found online the USA is conspicuously absent.

Seems to make the future world portrayed in “Idiocracy” far more plausible doesn’t it?

So I went over to Seattle today to try and do some shopping.

I figured I would take the truck down within 3 blocks or so of the Bremerton ferry so if it was raining when I came back it wouldn’t be a 3-mile walk.

I parked in a little lot that was 4$ for 10 hours and stuck 4 1$ coins in the slots.

When I came back there was a wet envelope on the windshield. Inside was a slip demanding 25$ because I had “failed to pay”.

I get the distinct feeling the parking folks are too stupid to realize that coins come in dollars now.