On Weddings
So I got engaged, and finally allowed myself to buy those wedding magazines. I hate to admit this but I did not naturally question all the things you are told that you need as part of a wedding. The things advertised in wedding magazines are really expensive, but also quite repetitive. First thing I realised was that almost every wedding dress was strapless and had a train, and most of the men’s suits were plain black.
I thought I would enjoy the process of going wedding dress shopping. Nevermind that I normally hate trying on clothes (let alone metres and metres of fabric), finding a fairytale dress is the dream of most little girls. We went to The Bridal Centre in Queen St Mall (I am not going to link them as I do not recommend them). I said I didn’t want a strapless dress, and they behaved like I was almost asking the impossible. I found a style of dress I liked, asked how much it would be to order it in, and they told me they couldn’t order it in.
Finally I tried on a fairly simple white dress, and it just did not suit me at all. We then went to Elizabeth de Varga in Broadway on the Mall. I tried on the first dress that fit my criteria, and it was perfect. Having realised that I was not having fun shopping, I was sold and had no desire to try on another dress. Elizabeth de Varga I do recommend because the price includes everything (they do six fittings and alter details of the dress in any way you like) whereas some places you order the dress in in the closest size and then pay hundreds extra to have it altered to fit. It is cheap compared to the dresses in wedding magazines, but you can definitely find dresses for a lot less.
Then thanks to God my path crossed with Definatalie who recommended that I visit the website OffbeatBride.com and, now having been there, I will stay as far away from other wedding sites as possible. And if I ever find out a friend is engaged, I will tell them “before you do anything else, visit offbeatbride.com” and I’ll buy them Ariel (the site owner)’s book. I am not exaggerating when I say (in agreement with other regular readers) that Ariel’s site set me free.
On Economics
I am a fan of philosophy because it encourages questioning what you are told, rather than just blindly accepting what “everybody knows”. Galileo, Copernicus and Einstein would have all been labelled as crazies simply for having questioned “science” and come up with a different conclusion that has more evidence behind it than the current accepted answer. Over time the majority have accepted their conclusions as truth, and the next person who dares to question their premises and discovers overwhelmingly contradictory evidence will again be labelled as a lunatic until people are educated in a new way of thinking.
This irritates me no end. Rather than labelling anyone who dares to question something accepted as an idiot, particularly if they’ve bothered to do some research and are happy to provide their evidence and logical reasoning for their opinion, perhaps we should pay them enough respect to question our own beliefs along with theirs.
I love economics but I unfortunately can’t think rationally about whether or not any of these handouts are a good idea now that I’ve been told that I might be receiving $900. I think I’m scared to question this policy because I sense deep down that it might not be in line with my economic values of the past, when all I really want to do is be grateful and celebrate free money (compared to the amount of work I’d normally have to put up with to make $900). Before anyone jumps down my throat and declares that because the government came up with the idea it must be more right than my opinion because they’ve had more formal training in economics than I have (without even bothering to question the government’s idea), well I recently read Henry Hazlitt’s famous Economics in One Lesson and was relieved to discover that his opinion is what I’ve always suspected was the real truth:
On Religulous
Kieran and I just watched Religulous (a documentary by Bill Maher). As critics have pointed out, he successfully found the people who could not give rational reasons for what they believe, and thus assumes that rational reasons cannot exist.
In the eyes of mainstream Christianity I’m probably labelled as a heretic because I don’t blindly accept what the person up the front of the church says but I consider things for myself. Some of my views are fundamentalist, some are liberal, some are from experience, some are from non-Christian sources, and some of them are from my own personal logic made up by me.
My responses as a self-defined bible-believing non-denominational Christian (had Bill bothered to interview someone that has considered the beliefs fed to them from their parents and community):
The Proust Questionnaire
This questionnaire was made famous by Marcel Proust around the turn of the century in France, and thus beats hands down any crappy email quizzes.