Dare To Ask Talk And News About Our Differences 
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In Jewish tradition, there is both the written law and the oral law. The oral law, which is considered a living thing, takes precedence. Of course, there are different interpretations of the oral law (which was actually written down over the centuries) which is why there are different observances among Jews. And it isn’t supposed to be a free-for-all, the interpretation is traditionally done by respected teachers or schools.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,There are quite a few reasons why government employees are viewed negatively. Government jobs were often patronage positions, in the bad old days, and the civil service reforms put in place a lot of mechanisms which sharply defined roles, responsibilities, and working conditions. I think this happened before union work rules and the like became common, but regardless of that most white collar workers don’t have anything like the protections that apply in the civil service. My wife, for example, gets ‘longevity pay’ which sounds like a gimme; of course, she doesn’t get the opportunities for advancement that might open up in private industry. She cannot get merit raises, her pay is determined by her grade. People often complain that poor civil service workers don’t get fired, but the flip side of that is that good ones don’t often get rewarded. Civil servants are bound by a lot of rules which, in point of fact, derive from the laws of their employing entities; but this need to abide by the rules is perceived by the public as personal inflexibility. For example, if I need some supplies to meet a customer need I can (in a pinch) buy them at a store and put in for reimbursement; my wife has to fill out a form and send it off to somewhere for competitive bidding, and if she’s lucky she’ll get the goods in her lifetime. To do otherwise would be to invite termination and possibly prosecution.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,It never occurred to me that blacks are hungrier for pleasure than white people. Are you mistaking their indifference to your behavioral norms for an innate difference? It is true that some cultures are more exuberant than others, and that some cultures are more Sybaritic (enjoying pleasures) than others, but I don’t think race enters into it. Sure, the Puritans were white and supposedly abstemious (although they drank rum in enormous quantities), but they were racially indistinguishable from Vikings, who were stereotypically lusty. I’m sure if you were to compare different cultures across sub-Saharan Africa, you’d see a similar range. Historically, people have tended to equate the seeking of pleasure with decadence, and hence with inferiority. During the Crusades, the Western Europeans looked down on the Italians and Byzantines as pleasure-obsessed sissies, and the Mongols regarded the Persians and other urbanized civilizations the same way.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I certainly don’t get the urge to rape; if anything, most of my fantasies revolve around being seduced. As for porn, there are plenty of women who watch it – I don’t think it has anything to do with rape, or even with seeing women as sex objects. My wife has more of an appetite for ‘dirty movies’ than I do; she likes to watch them with me as a prelude to sex between us.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,Perhaps this has to do with the popular figures they see on TV? It seems to me that certain TV shows that feature African-American casts are populated with characters who screech a lot. There have been influential TV shows in the past whose characters and dialogue influenced common behavior, so this may be just another example that happens to couple African-American women with a particularly noisy schtick.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,This problem is relatively new, since for much of recorded history nobody made such fine distinctions. The enemy was the enemy: kits, cats, sacks and wives. Are civilian casualties ‘OK’? No. Can they be avoided completely? Probably not. Does the blame lie with those whose bombs, aimed at military targets, incidentally kill civilians? Or does it lie with those who put military installations near civilians, or mingle their soldiers with the general population? Some of both. There is no perfect solution to this. War, or for that matter even civil police actions (a car chase, for example) always raises this issue. In the United States, some people have been agitating for rules that would, in effect, forbid the police from chasing suspects because there have been a few instances in which fleeing suspects crashed their cars and hurt bystanders. To hamstring the police by not allowing them to pursue any criminal with the wit to run away is, to me, silly. There are some risks that are simply the price of some expected good result, and that’s life. The situation in Afghanistan is, unfortunately, similar. We should be as careful as we can, and guard against the temptation to (for example) turn the country into a radioactive field of glass, which we could do without putting our own people in harm’s way; but this isn’t a double standard. The terrorists did not accidentally kill a few civilians while attacking an army base, after all: they deliberately targeted civilians to achieve their goal of causing terror.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,Different ethnic or racial groups have differing amounts of body hair; it’s just that simple. Chinese and Japanese tend to be fairly sparse in that regard; the Ainu, who also live in Japan but are quite different, tend to be more hairy. I seem to recall that the Chinese contrasted themselves with their Mongol overlords, as the Mongols had beards.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,There are several things that make a girl look unapproachable. First, if she is with another guy, especially (in your age bracket) a ‘big man’ (football captain, etc.). Second, if she is always in a group of girlfriends: when a guy approaches, does she step forward to talk, or do the girls close ranks around her? Third, if she is not outgoing, guys will assume she is not interested; I imagine that beautiful-but-shy girls are perceived as stand-offish. I don’t know, because I always assumed they didn’t want to have anything to do with me and never found out if they were just shy.
I guess I could sum it up by asking if a guy you didn’t like asked you out, would you accept? Would you turn him down kindly? Or would you and your friends start giggling at his audacity?
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,The reason is simple: the Bible prohibits cooking a kid in its mother’s milk, and all the rest proceeds from that. Fish mothers obviously have no milk. From what I recall, the prohibition didn’t extend to fowl until fairly recently, probably for the same reason. I think the line was moved on the grounds that birds, having obvious red blood, have to be kashered (have the blood drained from their meat) the same way mammals do; either that was enough to get them reclassified on its own, or the issue was that the same utensils were used on chickens as on cows, so you’d either have to create a third category and a third set of utensils or you’d have to lump the birds in with the mammals. Fish don’t have obvious blood vessels and their meat isn’t drained of blood, so they retain their neutral status.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,There are many possible answers to your question, and without knowing you, I can’t tell which ones fit your circumstances. You are reporting your own observations, so you are not a third-party observer, and your own personality is part of the equation. First, many people need a certain amount of interdependence in a relationship; sometimes a lot of it. Clearly, those people are not for you. Some people are dog people, some people are cat people. Second, it may be that your pride in your independence leads you to certain behaviors that others don’t like, and you may exhibit those behaviors more dramatically (or even exclusively) with men than with women friends. Remember, I don’t know you; I can’t tell if you are bitchy or not. I had a female acquaintance who went out of her way to ‘assert her independence’ toward her husband in ways that I thought were inconsiderate to the point of cruelty, i.e. hiding money, having affairs, lying about where she was going and when she would be back, etc. She wasn’t, to my mind, secure and independent; she was nuts. Third – and this is a problem between me and my wife – men and women tend to have different social styles. I and my male friends tend to reach a decision (where to go to lunch, for example) based on who feels more strongly: I might say pizza, a friend might say burgers, and then we negotiate from there. If I really, really want pizza, I’ll dig in my heels and typically prevail; if the other guy really, really wants burgers, I’ll probably go along after some give and take. My wife and some other women I’ve known tend to take any ‘second opinion’ as outright disagreement, not a stage in a negotiation. If my wife says pizza and I say burgers, she’ll figure I wouldn’t have spoken up at all if pizza were acceptable, and she’ll either (from her viewpoint) give in without a word or (because she is independent and secure) she’ll announce that we’ll have to eat separately. The former leaves me feeling like a bully, because I might well have gone along if she had persevered, and the latter leaves me feeling rejected. Different styles, unintended messages. Does any of that help?
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,This is just a guess, but I suspect anyone who is willing to date across cultural, religious, or racial boundaries will be perceived as being a little larger than life. This would be partly because they are seen as somewhat exotic, and partly because they are at least adventurous to cross the street (as it were). Due to their stereotypical social advantages, I suspect the white partner in a racially-mixed relationship runs a risk of being seen as patronizing, deservedly or not.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I’ve noticed this, but it isn’t restricted to other ethnic groups. It has to do with the foods and toiletries people use, and related things. For example, people who smoke some brands of cigarettes have a particular odor to me; whether it’s from their bodies or clothes, I don’t know. Some ethnic groups use spices that permeate their bodies, such as garlic. If you don’t eat garlic, it will stand out to you. I’ve heard that Americans smell because they eat a lot of red meat. As a child I had relatives whose families smelled odd to me, even though ethnically we were identical. I don’t know what it was, perhaps even a particular laundry product. As an adult I eat everything and don’t seem to notice ethnic variations in odor except when some perfume or other is popular (e.g. when a lot of gay men wore Aramis).
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I think you may be misinformed: after all, there are plenty of curly headed blonds, and most people from lands bordering the Mediterranean are swarthy to various degrees. One of the darkest-skinned white people I ever knew was Greek; her family had been living in the hills near Sparta since Hector was a pup. Another was Jewish. None of that requires sub-Saharan ancestry. I doubt it has much to do with Hannibal; he, after all, was Carthaginian and they were Phoenicians, not blacks. There’s a good chance that his army included Berbers and similar people from North Africa, but again, those people are not black. Also, Hannibal didn’t occupy Italian soil for long. Sicily is very diverse, ethnically, having been colonized by the Greeks, invaded by the Vandals (a Germanic tribe that occupied North Africa), and held at various times by armies from Western Europe. Again, however, there was no widespread migration or invasion by blacks. Italy was a major commercial hub for a couple of thousand years, so undoubtedly there were traders (and slaves) from all over passing through; that would have included Moors (viz. Othello), again non-Negro Africans, and probably a few folks from sub-Saharan Africa, Nubia and Ethiopia. I doubt there were enough to change the complexion of Italy. Finally, let me comment that the ancient Greeks and Romans knew what blacks looked like, and they never mentioned that there was any population of them in Italy.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I am not a Hassidic Jew, but I’m certainly familiar with Jewish law, and my grandparents started out Hassidic. Unless they have some secret practice not shared by or known to other Jews, this sheet story is poppycock. It may be that this is a distorted version of an actual practice. According to Jewish law, a menstruating woman is ritually unclean and may not physically touch or be touched by a man. Once her period is over, she will undergo a cleansing ceremony and can then interact normally with her husband. While she is unclean, a wife and husband will sleep in separate beds to avoid both accidental contact and temptation. (In fact, she will avoid doing anything to encourage displays of affection, such as making his favorite food.)
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I think a lot of this lies in the perceptions of the audience. There was a ‘Far Side’ cartoon captioned ‘What dogs hear’; a person was talking, and the dog heard ‘blah, blah, blah, Ginger, blah blah, Ginger, blah….’ People suffer from the same selectivity to a degree, and anything that hits their particular button jumps off the page at them. Add to this the human desire to have the whole world nod in agreement when we speak (or even think), and you have a perception of bias where none might exist. That’s why you often see letters to the editor from opposite sides of an issue, both complaining about an article being slanted against them. However, it’s also pretty clear that reporters have their own sympathies. Even if they try their best to be evenhanded, there is always the choice of what to put in, what to leave out, what to lead with, and what to bury in the third paragraph. An editor who has to trim an article by 1/3 will also use his own judgement; he won’t just cross out every third word. I think it’s impossible for bias to be avoided completely. Presenting tabular or graphic data, which you’d think are objective, still involves decided what to put on top, what on the left, what to be cross-hatched and what to be black, etc.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,
