submit your one-two punch?

see, chris, there's always at least one thing that screws up the equation, though corinne and i find that it is often that those who like outdoor sports do not watch sports on television. this reminds me of jill's famous test in which she would coyly ask the man she was dating "so...do you like to watch sports on tv?" and "do you drive an SUV?" and the trick was that those were two of her biggest pet peeves. so an answer in the affirmative to either meant that was the first and the last date. i would love to see if anyone else can formulate a personal one-two punch to eliminate rotten eggs. mine might be "so, are you eli manning?" and "do you live in lakeside?" of course his reaction to the question "can we go to IHOP for dinner?" would be crucial as well. my sister, lauren, for instance would fail because she scoffs at IHOP and does not recognize the treasures therein. incidentally, she would fail for a number of other legal reasons as well, despite being an awfully fun person to be around.

emily, i have indeed been very vexed by the heinous personal ads for old men and young thai girls on my site. lately it's been the oakland raiders, and that is a step better, much as i despise them, it's a lot better than prostitution on my site. should i get rid of adsense? i don't think i've made any money off it.

class tonight was fun. i'm really enjoying the deep, interesting discussions we get into every week. today was about defining ethnic identity and how prejudice relates to ethnic violence. we tallied up a number of factors that might be used to create a model predictor for ethnic violence--not just tension, but the threshold where tension turns into violence. if you are interested i'll email you the list, too long to write here--one interesting point was that you can't just use economic position, you have to account for economic activity and how it is going up or down and who it is affecting as it shifts. civil right movement and WWII germany show that relatively wealthy countries can breed ethnic violence as well as iompoverished ones, though economic prosperity generally helps people live in harmony. it's giving me lots of interesting research ideas. did you know that botswana is called the african miracle? because even though they had a colonial government, multiracial society, and severe economic crises they managed to gradually and peacefully reform and transfer power as opposed to rwanda, zimbabwe, and to an extent, south africa.
i also read a study about the breakup of czechoslovakia's republic and how one of the reasons they were vulnerable to communism was that they werent arguing about policies, but about how the whole state was structured and how that revealed inequity between the two major ethnic groups. so then they were never able to construct an effective government. i'm wondering if taiwan's government could be headed in the same direction. maybe not, but it would make for interesting research. if they can't pass laws to make things better, or change things up, then they are vulnerable to outside pressure.