34 days ago  13 comments

Lies, Damn Lies, Etc.

I like looking at statistical facts and trends. The Census Bureau puts out a neat compilation every year called the annual Statistical Abstract. You can find all sorts of stuff in there, but I was recently looking at the marriage and divorce trends. I noticed this good news/bad news story in the numbers. Nationwide, the divorce rate is less than 4 per 1000 people (around 3 in my home state of MD) which reflects a continuing decline since the early 80's when it peaked at 5.3. The divorce rate now is at its lowest point since 1970. Unfortunately, the marriage rate is also declining. The national marriage rate is about 7.5 marriages per 1000 people. The marriage rate was 8.3 in 2000 and 9.8 in 1990.

While the undeniable trend is that fewer divorces are occurring each year, it seems also that fewer people are signing on for the lifetime contract. Still, the population grows. What does this mean? Are people choosing to raise families without bothering with marriage? A study published by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University last year said that only 63% of American children grow up with both biological parents.  This was claimed to be the lowest amount in the Western world. Nearly  four out of ten children are born out of wedlock and increasing numbers of kids are living in step-families, or with unmarried cohabitating adults, or with a single parent.

 As the poster boy for the nuclear family, I confess that I find these trends uncomfortable. I've never been divorced, although many people I know well have been married and divorced multiple times. This confuses me and violates my sense of normality. (I grew up in a small town where divorce surely happened but was never talked about. In my family divorce simply isn't done. It was actually slightly scandalous that my sister married a man whose father is divorced from his mother – shocking!) Still, as basically normal as I'd like to  believe myself to be in this regard, it seems that I'm bucking the trend. Among my friends and colleagues I'm probably the most totally married and family oriented guy around. A young engineer I know told me how great it was to be taking a particular business trip we were on because he'd be able to score some action while away from his wife. He was pretty frank about it, though it probably never occurred to him that I might do the same thing. Beside the fact that my wife is the sun and moon for me, running around is just not who I am. All who have met me know this.* I exude happily married guy out my pores to all the babes out there in Temptationland. The fact is, I love my wife and kids and I like being married and being a dad. I get everything I need and want from these relationships. The Census Bureau has made me wonder, though, if I'm just some kind of Pollyanna for thinking this is what normal is supposed to be.

FYI, some fun links.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2008edition.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/opinion/29wolfers.html?ref=opinion

http://marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/SOOU/TEXTSOOU2007.htm

* There's a rumor among my friends that I'm faithful to my wife out of recognition of the fact that I have no hope whatsoever of sleeping with anyone better looking in my lifetime. There's nothing I can say to this. JM is, in fact, really attractive.

34 days ago  5 comments

Calling All Old Fogies

In our quest to remove all disposable income from our lives, JM and I went shopping for new cell phones yesterday.  The AT&T store had what I must describe as a bewildering array of phones to trap the unwary with crap they'll never, ever use.  I mean, it's just a phone, right?  The earnest young man in the store worked very hard to help us, but he quickly concluded that we were not, you might say, exactly up to speed on the latest phone technology.

OK, I have to point out here that I am in the science and technology business.  I make my living evaluating and helping to advance the state of the art in sonar electronics and signal processing algorithms.  I know a lot about some seriously high tech stuff.  Except phones, apparently.  The subtleties of the latest phone capabilities and limitations have slipped by me sometime when I was trying to figure out underwater acoustics.   The earnest young man (let's call him Ernie) knew he was in for a long, painful session about a minute and a half into our phone upgrade interview.

Ernie: What sort of features are you looking for?
Me: Something newer than what we have now, but not too exotic. Or expensive.
JM:  I'd like to get a phone with a camera.  Don't they mostly all have cameras now?
Ernie: Hoookay.  Sure, we can find you something with a camera.  This one over here has a 1.3 Megapixel camera, but that's pretty old stuff these days.  I'd start with 2 Mpixs if I were you.   This unit over here is one of the few to come with a flash.
Me: A camera with a flash?  That's cool.
Ernie: (Misses irony, winces visibly)  And this one over here comes with a memory stick slot for storing your pictures, and it comes with a music player and pedometer so you can use it to track your calories burned when you work out.
JM: When I work out?
Ernie: You know, if you want to.
Me: Tell me again how this is not expensive.
Ernie:  --- Much later -- Or I could give you a baseline Motorola RAZR for free.

We ended up buying two middle of the road Sony Ericsson phones  with the 2 Mpixel cameras (no flash included) and the MP3 player and the built in pedometer in case hell freezes over and I want to work out while taking pictures of myself listening to music.   If that ever happens I'll know just how many calories I used up. After all my protests that I "just needed a phone" JM and I have spent approximately 18 of the last 24 hours  sending pictures to people and loading music on the memory stick.  I may have made a call or two just to prove the phone actually can still do that sort of thing.  I haven't tested the pedometer.