Letters to the Editor
elbel
Published Letters: 15 Editor's Choice: 4
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Believe him, leave him, find someone who cares.
[Read the article: Will my boyfriend ever want kids and marriage?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hey LW --
I agree with the other writers who say: he's telling you clearly. Listen to him. Believe him.
Right now you're with someone who either doesn't want what you want and is telling you that, or with someone who doesn't know himself well enough to project into his future.
Remember the scene in _When Harry Met Sally_ where Sally is distraught because her ex -- who said he never wanted to marry -- gets married? Sally says "It's not that he didn't want to get married. It's that he didn't want to get married to *me*."
Let's turn this around: If your boyfriend did want to get married to you, and eventually have kids, would he be telling you that he never wants to? If he could envision spending the rest of his life with you, would he be telling you that he doesn't see himself ever sharing his life with anyone?
He may otherwise be a great guy, but this situation is not worth years of your life. I promise -- you will be proud of yourself for standing up for what you want and not trying to talk yourself into believing he'll change.
Good luck!
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We need a plan for some civil disobedience.
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sure, some of the TSA officers are petty bureaucrats who get off by exercising their "authority" to make our lives miserable. (Tampa International is particularly horrible.)
That said: the problem isn't the agents doing the checks. They are told to enforce the rules. Often times, the rules are made stupider than necessary to make them easier to enforce and less ambiguous. Instead of coming up with a complex algorithm to explain the types of knives that are and aren't okay, they just say "no knives whatsoever". Hey, at least we're a nation of laws and not of men; the alternative would open the door to race, gender, and age-based profiling for who got to carry on danger items and who didn't. So everyone has to follow the same stupid rules.
At base the problem is the people who make the stupid rules. The solution to this problem might seem like complaining to your congressperson; but I don't think that'll work. No congressperson is ever going to want to be on the record as voting against security regulations, even if those security regulations are a farce that don't particularly decrease the (already tiny) risk of something bad happening on a plane.
I wonder what sorts of acts of civil disobedience might be used to protest these stupid rules? Like, what would Ghandi do? Maybe we should all start going to the airports as close to naked as possible, and carrying through as little as possible (like a small wallet or satchel). They're starting to use those awful machines that virtually strip you naked: let's just play the game better.
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@Roymus
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The technology is simple: at any time an airplane's course or behavior is deemed suspicious, the cockpit controls are overridden by the closest Air Traffic Control center (obviously with appropriate authorization) and the plane put into level flight until the situation can be resolved.
The problem with such a system is that it can be hacked. Remotely controlling a plane would require lots of computer software and computer networking, which is complicated and inherently buggy and subject to hacking. Moreover, the government gets its software from private companies who write government software as a revenue stream (rather than for the sake of engineering excellence or technological innovation). Generally speaking, those companies do not tend to attract the best minds in computer science: Silicon Valley and academia do, or even the NSA or Pentagon. It is very rare for someone good at CS to say "hmm, I think I'll move to Ohio to work for Diebold". They say "Hmm, I think I'll move to San Francisco to work for Google," or "I think I'll move to DC to work on crypto for the government".
It's a good idea in concept, but it would be like Diebold voting machines, only with the potential for death and destruction. Alas.
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Probably not the right situation.
[Read the article: I seem to be moving in with my boyfriend -- but why?!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He needs a nanny and a housekeeper -- not to use you as such in exchange for the title of "girlfriend". This is why high-powered lawyers get paid so much: their lives get eaten up with work, but they're compensated so they can at least outsource the work.
At the most charitable this guy sounds like he's entering a new phase where he won't be able to take care of his son very well and he's grasping at straws. You're 23; you shouldn't necessarily be expected to know better. He's 29, and while immaturity can certainly last forever, I don't have very high opinions of a 29 year old who's trying to move in his young girlfriend to help manage his house and take care of his kid.
Moving into a home with a child is monumental -- he shouldn't be asking you to do it. If you're engaged, perhaps. But either way he should have staff on hand to deal with this.
Listen to yourself. You don't need to do this, and you're already feeling that it's not the right thing. There are other guys out there who won't date you into a housekeeping job.
Good luck!