The interview game
* Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
* I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better. If I already know you well, expect the questions may be a little more intimate!
* You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
* You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
* When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Courtesy of sigerson.
- You're something of a globehopper. Are there countries that you would never consider visiting? Why?
There are a couple different ways of interpreting that question. One is "are there any countries that i strongly don't want to visit?" I don't know that there are, really. There are some countries that make it very hard to visit (e.g. Bhutan, North Korea), or are just dangerous to visit (e.g. Afghanistan, Somalia), but that doesn't mean i don't want to so much as it may mean i won't be able to.
And certainly there are the countries that are unpopulated barren wastelands. But even barren wastelands usually have something interesting going for them. They're just quite low on the priority list.
Another way of taking the question is at face value. In that case, i'd have to say i would never consider visiting countries that i don't know about. But that's a snarky literalist answer (not that you expected otherwise).
- You once told me that you'd thought about becoming a priest. What would have to have changed in your life for you to take up that vocation?
Whew, that's a doozy.
Ultimately, i realized that not having faith in the Catholic god was a barrier to entry. Or at least a barrier to being useful in that role. So the biggest change in my life would have to be faith: having it, or not losing it (it's unclear to me at this point whether i really had faith to lose in the first place).
One thing that is clear is that my path of questioning, once started, had an inevitable conclusion. So it's possible that failing to question my faith in the first place would have been enough. I would have to have been a very different person for that to come to pass.
However, i didn't seriously consider the priesthood until after i had started questioning. So failing to question may not be enough. It may be that i would have needed to believe in the ability to be a priest without faith. Well, in my ability to be a priest without faith. Faith in my faithlessness, in a way.
- Describe the ideal neighborhood.
Urban. Low-rises, not more than, say, five or six stories. Commercial space mixed in with the residential -- not just stores, but restaurants, pubs, salons, office space, etc.. Parks. Front porches or stoops where people actually hang out. Wide demographics: age, racial, economic, etc. Everyone knows who the local alderman/city councilor/whatnot is.
Low crime would be nice, too, though that's a tough one to construct at the neighborhood level.
- You're given the opportunity to make three bills (state or federal) and have them automatically signed into law. What do you legislate?
Ooh! The Legislative Genii! Can i draft a bill that gives me the ability to draft infinite bills which are automatically signed into law?
Right, anyhow. That's a good question.
First, i would pass a bill which rolls back all increases to executive power that have been enacted since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the absence of a nation with significant preemptive strike power, we can afford to have a reactive executive. We would probably have a few years of chaos inside the beltway, as congress suddenly needs to be competent again, but it would even out soon enough, and we'd be a more stable republic at the end of it.
Next, i would end the War on Drugs (though this is partly accomplished by the rollback of executive power above). This would entail the legalization or decriminalization of all currently criminal substances (repeal of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, withdraw or reexamine our party status in the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 and the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971), dismantle the DEA, stop federal drug-enforcement-related funding of local law enforcement agencies, establish the lack of federal ability to legislate on matters of substance abuse, and encourage state and local legislatures to repeal any increase in police powers granted under the aegis of drug enforcement.
Wow, i get one more. This one would have to be state-level, not federal, but it would hopefully serve as a model for other states. Establish approval voting as the voting method for all state and local elections. While we're at it, require any and all electronic voting devices to either 1- operate only fully open-source software, or 2- record each and every ballot on a separate paper voting receipt which will be visible and verifiable by the voter and used for audits and recounts.
- What part of your current life did you never expect?
I never expected to be unemployed as often, regularly, profitably, or enjoyably as i have been in my adult life. It's a remarkable thing to have the right and ability to leave a work situation, and not one which i would have thought of fifteen years ago.
Also, i never really expected to live in Chicago for as long as i have. When i moved here, i figured i'd be in for a couple years, and then off to another locale, whether midwest, west coast, or expatriated. But i seem to have settled in a bit. It's a good city.