big topics, small questions

-- In Ireland, thousands turned out on Saturday to protest newly-approved price hikes on, of all life-giving substances, WATER. The object of the hikes is to pay off debt accrued after the banks and brokers torpedoed the world economy and made a pretty penny doing it.

Taxing water strikes me as inching dangerously close to a call to arms. Everyone needs water and a lot of people are between a financial rock and a hard place. The banks and brokers may own the political system and have a formidable, armed force at their disposal, but water is serious stuff.

-- A BBC essay delves into the reasons, reasoning, and irritation with the tradition of married women assuming their husband's names.

What I'm waiting to see is the essay that investigates the need and imperative for MARRIAGE as something more than a social activity. The ritual can be startling and delicious in its richness, but the "one flesh" oratory strikes me as more decorative and possibly coercive than anything else. And goodness knows it is heedlessly expensive. Taking vows that someone else confected ... how sensible is that? Is such a set of vows uplifting or demeaning in the end?