Squashed

And it’s not just because I find Arianna Huffington’s unreflective self-righteousness off-putting. It’s the constant pandering to political bias that bothers me.

We all have biases. The dream of unbiased media is impossible. Since perspective is inherent in communication, it’s probably not even a sensical concept. But even if we escape from bias, there’s no need to jump into it. And there’s no respectable reason to distort or exaggerate a story, simply to prove how biased you are.

Take this story, for example:

Bill O’Reilly: ‘Sarah Palin Needs To Go To College’

Did Bill O’Reilly say that? Yes. Shocking! In fighting on the political right! Except, what he actually said was:

Sarah Palin needs to go to college. Political college, world affairs college, and she is. She’s hired a bunch of advisers and they’re giving her a whole bunch of tracks to learn, because it is a sophisticated deal.

Oh. That’s not even a real story. It’s almost like the Huffington Post is trying to make a scandal out of nothing. And that’s reprehensible no matter whose political ally you are.

A conservative Tumblog tells a (hopefully fictional) story of his despondent friend worried about lost employment, looming foreclosure on a mortgage, spiraling debt, and general economic woes. Rather than advising his friend on any number of social safety nets and programs put in place to handle just this situation, the Conservative says that he handed the friend a gun, telling him to go rob somebody with more than he has. The Conservative argues that this is the moral equivalent of using a progressive income tax to support social programs. Or, as the Conservative writes:

“Would you prefer that I send the gun to the guy you voted in as President?  He’ll do it for you,” I replied.  ”But,” I continued, “does that make it any less insane, or any less wrong?  Is the taking of another’s rightful property by force, for the benefit of your need, OK so long as it’s someone in a position of elected authority doing the taking?”

He stared at me, blankly, his jaw open in disbelief.

I stared back, waiting for a rebuttal.

Since the friend was mysteriously struck dumb before rebutting this rather absurd proposition, I will do it for him.

Rightful Property?

Property rights are a made up thing. They are created by and enforced by human institutions. Your property is only yours because 1) the government says it is yours and 2) we generally regard the government as legitimate enough that we take its word for what is or isn’t yours. Our concept of private property didn’t spring fully-formed from the head of Zeus. It evolved over a number of centuries under the guidance of different government institutions. And without government enforcement, private property as we know it would not exist.

Of course, when the government says something isn’t yours, it isn’t yours. The portion of your income you pay in taxes isn’t yours. You can pretend it is. You can pretend that you’re entitled to it. And, to the extent that we like stuff, we’re happy to insist we’re entitled to it. People, rich or poor, get upset when something they think they are entitled to is taken away.

Are Taxes Robbery?

No. If you take public money by refusing to pay your taxes, somebody will, eventually take it away from you. If you want to be a real dick about it, it might eventually be taken by force—just as something stolen from you would be taken, by force, from the thief and returned to you.

But there is a huge difference between a government governing by consent and one guy robbing people at gunpoint. Most people pay their taxes willingly. A few people get a bit crazy about it. But the system only works because the vast majority of people consider it legitimate.

And the government is bound by laws. Even the President is bound by laws. (Note: Dick Cheney probably disagrees with this.) If the government wants to take something, it has to follow a set of previously established procedures, popularly implemented procedures to do it. This also sets it apart from a random guy with a gun.

Are Social Programs Stealing Your Precious, Precious Wealth?

Hardly. Keeping a stable society, despite the best efforts of certain conservative policies to gut and topple our entire economic structure, is critical for preserving our concept of social property. Is Obama raising your taxes? (Probably not. He probably actually cut them, not that you noticed. But let’s pretend that he did.) Is extending unemployment benefits or trying to prevent foreclosures or feeding and offering medical care to the impoverished likely to take away your wealth? Not likely. These things contribute to a stable society. The alternative is either revolution or higher taxes to pay for a lot more police and a lot more prisons.

So, Conservative Tumblr, your friend isn’t going to take your gun and rob you. He has better options. He doesn’t need to turn to violence. And when you’re in the same position he’s in, you’ll have help getting back on your feet.

SDS and robot-heart-politics are having an interesting back and forth about Objective Moral Standards.

SDS writes,

Nobody argues with any seriousness that people who deny an objective moral standard can’t in fact act morally. Of course they can; they just can’t provide a valid reason why it’s moral and why anyone else should give a damn.

Robot-Heart (politics) responds,

The day someone presents me with an objective moral standard is the day I’ll stop following my own conscience on matters of morality. Until then, you’ll have to pardon me if I scoff at the idea that anyone has the monopoly on “valid” reasons for believing what they believe.

In this case, “objective” is a tricky word. Is there a moral standard that exists independently from our culturally influenced perception of morality? Most of us, whether we admit it or not, believe that there is. Afterall, if there isn’t some sort of objective moral standard, be it secular or be it sacred, virtue and vice become meaningless. We might be able to declare our own actions right or wrong. We can also declare somebody else’s actions right or wrong. But we don’t have anything to draw on if we’re trying to persuade anybody else to our point of view. If we condemn injustice, our condemnation is only shared by the people who already feel the same way we do. Whether we believe in an objective morality or not, we act as if there is one. At least, we act as if there is some morality beyond ourselves that should also bind others.

But believing in an objective morality doesn’t answer the question of how the heck we’re supposed to answer it. I believe, for example, that parrots exist, objectively. I believe that if some people believe parrots breathe fire that they are objectively wrong. And I have all sorts of evidence for my belief. Some are indirect. I have read texts about parrots. I seen parrots portrayed in movies. I have heard somebody tell the story of a yowling cat and a parrot imitating a yowling cat on a cross-country car trip. And I also have sensory experiences. I have heard parrots. I have touched parrots. I have seen parrots. All of this is relatively direct—in that mine is the only mind filtering it. But it is indirect in that my mind doesn’t connect directly with the parrot. Somebody deaf could not hear the parrot as I could. Somebody colorblind would not see the parrot in quite the same way I would. Somebody closer or further away would see a different aspect of the parrot. Somebody who saw parrots more frequently would react differently to a parrot’s appearance. And somebody who had studied parrots for years might notice different things about the parrot. Even as there is an objective parrot, we experience it subjectively.

If (as I believe) there exists an objective morality, we still have the problem of how to access it. Is it embedded in our experiences of the world? Do we get it second hand—taught to us by our parents or through a holy or inspired text? The belief in objective morality doesn’t eliminate the problems of moral relativity.

Jeffrey Zeldman thinks not. He’s wrong.  While you cannot copyright “words and short phrases” under U.S. copyright law, you can fit a lot into 140 characters. Some tweets almost certainly meet the “minimally creative” standard. And a whole series of tweets would certainly have a copyright. And Zeldman’s suggestion that you Trademark a Tweet is entirely off-base.

[More Details]

That said, there’s a serious fair use question. Is there any use of a single Tweet that isn’t fair? Perhaps. You might get in trouble if you started selling t-shirts derived exclusively from somebody else’s Twitter feed. But, for the most part, fair use will protect short quotes—and it’s hardly practical to quote half of a 140 character Tweet. So yes, you have a copyright in your Tweet. But no, you won’t be able to enforce it.

(Also, using “copyright” as a verb is a little strange. Under U.S. law, you get your copyright as soon as you write something down. You can, if you choose, register it. But I’m not sure why you would register an individual Tweet.)

… for teenagers awkwardly flirting online.

And for people who secretly wish they were born Dadaists.

I won’t let on which of those I am.

When I started working in poverty law, I thought the biggest cause of poverty would be alcohol followed closely by other drugs. I was wrong. All my clients have financial problems. And most were caused (or at least complicated) by overusing, misusing, or just relying on credit cards.

Credit cards are incredibly convenient. They allow you to spend money, regardless of whether you’re carrying it with you. And if you lose your wallet, they’re relatively easy to replace with minimal risk to yourself. Of course,

The downside? They tend to trap people in a never-ending spiral of debt. And it’s not simply a case of a few people being irresponsible. The credit card companies actively encourage this financial irresponsibility. But a few rules can at least mitigate some of the cost.

1. Never spend money you don’t already have. Your credit limit is not a bank account.
2. Pay off your balance in full, on time, every month. Automatic bank account deductions are a good way to do this.
3. Review your bills. Anything look fishy? Are there any recurring charges for things you forgot to cancel?

If you have problems following any of these, you can solve the problem by taking a sturdy pair of scissors to the card. Pay off the balance as soon as possible. Switch to a debit card.

Incidentally, there aren’t a lot of exceptions. Credit cards aren’t a good bridge to offer a bit of money until you can get more income. Sure, you can do that for a few months—but then you still won’t have money and it’s a lot further down. And while it’s plausible that a credit card could help out in a genuine emergency, it’s more likely that the credit card will cause the emergency.

He was the first Republican Senator to side with the Democrats on the jobs bill. It’s the first time a a Republican filibuster has been broken since the election of … Scott Brown.

He may lean right. He may be crazy. But he just might be the lunatic we’re looking for.

Mitch Bainwol, Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America wrote a press release editorial, Google has reason to rethink IP. As background, defendants in copyright infringement lawsuits have included a bunch of college students (and sometimes their unwitting grandmothers) who don’t have the resources to hire attorneys to defend them and Google, which does. In fact, Google is the main company willing to lay out the resources defend fair use.

Bainwol is gleeful that Google has been hit by hackers who “stole Google’s intellectual property.” Bainwol goes on to discuss the “the effect of IP theft on the U.S. economy.” And perhaps, he speculates, now that Google knows what it feels like to have it’s intellectual property “stolen” it will suddenly agree with the RIAA that the section of the copyright act about fair use doesn’t really mean what it says it means.

The problem is that Bainwol is melding to radically different things. Does it take hackers to infringe a copyright? Of course not. Copyright infringement is about copying readily available information. If it takes a hacker to find your copyrighted work, your marketing team really sucks. The same thing applies to trademarks. And patents, by their nature, are already publicly available information.

So what sort of “intellectual property did the hackers “steal”?

(Pro tip: Notice how I suddenly put the scare quotes around “intellectual property”? It mean’s I’m about to talk about trade secrets, which are sort of intellectual property but are mostly just the sort of thing that people call intellectual property to make it sound more important.)

Hackers probably stole some information Google considered proprietary. This either means that Google called it proprietary—which has roughly the same legal effect as stamping “Top Secret” on your diary—or that Google has actually gone to reasonable measures to keep the information secret. In that case, trade secret laws would prohibit Google’s competitors from buying the information from the hackers. Trade secret law is an attempt to reign in industrial espionage.

Either way, this is a radically different sort of “intellectual property” than Bainwol is talking about. Fair use is about allowing the public reasonable access to parts of culture and to prevent copyright law from stifling innovation. The hackers were after something else entirely.

Catbus offers five facts and a conclusion regarding torture and the Iraq war. They are pretty damning—and I would encourage anybody who disagrees and thinks they can offer a full or rebuttal to do so.

If it hadn’t been for what we did—with respect to the…enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees…—then we would have been attacked again. Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the US…. - Dick Cheney, 2009

Fact #1: The reasons for the war against Iraq were largely based on bullshit and/or things that turned out to be false; this includes the supposed weapons programs and, more relevant to this post, links between Iraq and Al Queda at the time preceding and time of the invasion;

Fact #2: By Dick Cheney’s own admission, “…Cheney acknowledged that the White House had told the Justice Department lawyers what legal opinions to render. In other words, the opinions amounted to ordered-up lawyering to permit the administration to do whatever it wanted”;

Fact #3: It is well documented thanks to Carl Levin and others (here, for example, and also here) that people doing the interrogation (including the people who waterboarded KSM 183 times over the course of a month) were pressured to come to certain conclusions that would provide support for engaging in war with Iraq;

Fact #4: One of the supposed links, for example, cited specifically by Cheney, was “a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon” and this turned out to be false per investigations by the FBI and CIA, the implication being that this had popped up during torture made permissible by fiat (fact 2);

Fact #5: It is well established that torture produces unreliable information from those tortured.

Allow me to draw links and a conclusion: This is a case of the executive branch of the government declaring torture legal (fact 3) per faulty and arguably pernicious reasoning (see OPR report and Cheney’s own declaration in fact 2). After torture was declared legal (either stupidly or perniciously, it’s irrelevant to this particular argument, although obviously not irrelevant to larger issues), it produced some intelligence that was flat-out wrong (fact 5) which was used by Dick Cheney to justify an invasion of Iraq (fact 4). These constituted the ‘things that turned out to be false’ in justifying the invasion of Iraq (fact 1); it is important to also note that (per fact 5) it’s likely the administration knew that their justification was likely based on false pretenses. So torture was declared permissible for illegitimate reasons and then bad information from torture was used to justify a really stupid war we went to for reasons that were kind of sketchy at best.

Huh.

Vruz and I still disagree on religion. He writes:

most dictionaries tell us:

religion

a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny

superstition

an irrational belief arising from ignorance or fear

vruz: therefore, organisations that propagate fear of supernatural powers are agents of organised superstition.

Vruz’s dictionary, unfortunately, is not very good. It leaves out any sort of atheistic or pantheistic religion. Here’s a more helpful definition:

1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhumanagency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conductof human affairs.2.a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion. 3.the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.

Vruz continues:

I believe there’s a room for spirituality, and I don’t believe science and spirituality are mutually exclusive. If you’d like to call spirituality a religion, it’s your choice of words.

I don’t actually consider generic spirituality a religion—because I don’t know what it means. Too often we say “I’m very spiritual” in the same way we say “I’m very deep.” We might as well say, “I consider myself to have a special connectedness to the rest of the universe that others aren’t privy to.” Or perhaps by saying, “I’m very spiritual” we mean, “something within me longs for more than the ordinary. I am searching.” In that case, it’s a liminal state. We’ve heard a calling but haven’t figured out how to answer. At other times we talk about spiritual disciplines such as prayer, meditation, fasting, and so on, they’re a means to something more important. But I’m not a big fan of spirituality for the sake of spirituality. (But, as a mirror to what Vruz suggests, if somebody is more comfortable with the term “spirituality” than the term “religion,” by all means, use spirituality.)

however, what far too many people understand by religion is a hierarchical social system, organized by men, with a more or less defined set of roles and rules, a belief in a supernatural power beyond our understanding,  all of which is tightly controlled by certain authorities, interpreting writings that have a final say on the spiritual experience of people, and the behaviour they are expected to follow.

Many religions are hierarchical, centrally organized, or both.  It’s not categorically true. Most protestants, for example, will prioritize personal experience over central teaching. In fact, that basic question of authority and interpretation was pretty central to the whole reformation.

this definition of religion is indeed incompatible with science. facts are no matter of subjective experience, reading, or authority. truth is a verifiable correspondence between facts and what we say of such facts.

Is that really what truth is? Let me make a few unverifiable statements. Tell me which is false:

• Torture is wrong.
• We have a responsibility to help those around us.
• Genocide is an atrocity.

there’s no such thing as a scientifically verifiable supernatural thing, because science doesn’t make any claims to the supernatural, only barely and humbly attempting to make some sense of the natural world, as a framework to aid our narrow understanding and limited senses.

Sure. By definition, you can’t verify something supernatural through natural means. That sort of thing happens when you define something as supernatural. But this is a tautology.

social systems that encourage and propagate fear, ignorance and the belief that science has done nothing to improve the life of people in the world —and moreover— make dangerous recommendations that put the lives of people at serious risk, are actually evil organisations that I condemn and I have no fear in calling out for what they are.

Go for it. And yes, you will probably find a few religious organizations that will agree with the statement that “science has done nothing to improve the life of people in the world.”  You won’t find a whole lot. Attributing those beliefs to all religious organizations is sort of like saying that all Europeans are pedophiles. You’ll be able to find some anecdotal evidence to back up your statement, but it’s still absurdly overinclusive.

Vruz concludes:

the whole purpose of understanding the world is to help make people live better lives. not in fear, not in ignorance, and not out of submission to powers they can’t comprehend. I contend that in such regard, organised superstition is mutually exclusive with science, as their aims, objectives and methods are profoundly incompatible.

I suppose I could contend that all science is about creating armies of reanimated corpses to enslave the world—but that wouldn’t mean I have a clue what I’m talking about. If you search through the world of people and organizations that identify themselves as religious, you’ll absolutely find some reprehensible things. You can find reprehensible things if you look hard enough at any large group. But don’t categorically dismiss the core beliefs of a majority of the world without making an effort to understand why they are so important. Nor does it make sense to condemn the ignorant beliefs of others when you are ignorant of what they believe.

Vruz, who quite obviously is not fan of religion, writes:

Is it any wonder that striving on ignorance and fear whilst believing in magic solutions from a heavenly father doesn’t work better than a system for organised learning and sharing information in an orderly manner? it’s pretty amazing when those in their perceived higher moral ground use the internet to propagate their beliefs. Hint: the internet is a creation of science, through cumulative work and understanding of how the universe is organised. And you know what? A god didn’t make the internet! all those vaccines that saved you from a certain death in your childhood? God didn’t put them in the world for you! Clever scientists engineered them.

With all respect to Vruz, the Science vs. Religion debate has a lot in common with the Cats vs. Sharks debate. It’s nonsense. And, with the exception of a few zealots on either side, everybody who knows what they’re talking about—be they physicists, theologians, or marine biologists—understands this. They are debates that don’t even make sense. A shark is a water-dwelling death machine. A cat is an often-domesticated feline. Science is a set of empirical methods used to answer questions. And religion is … well, it’s something else. It’s an over-broad word that means radically different things to different people. But for now, let’s say religion is an individual or communal response to existential inquiries regarding value and purpose.

Vruz talking about religion is something like Ted Stevens talking about the Internet. You can sort of decipher a point—but it’s pretty clear he has no idea what he’s talking about. I don’t mean to be a hater, Vruz, but it takes hubris to write off the faith that has brought people through darker horrors than we bear to imagine with their minds intact as mere ignorance, fear, and superstition.

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The bank bailout was the political and economic equivalent of chemotherapy. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t glamorous. Nobody wanted it. But it was necessary. Sure, we could have told the megabanks to go ahead and collapse—and to take  the entire financial system with them. We could boiled our shoes for food knowing we’d taken a principled stand. Or maybe the entire world financial system wouldn’t have collapsed. Maybe there wouldn’t have been a run on the banks. Maybe the FDIC wouldn’t have gone insolvent. Maybe we felt like lucky punks. But governing on a whim and a prayer is not responsible governing.

Alternatively, the bailouts. Or, more technically, the Emergency Econoic Stabilization Act of 2008. It was thrown together quickly—because the financial markets were melting like the Wicked Witch of the West. It passed with (genuine) bipartisan support and was signed into law by Bush.

And how did it do? 1) It stabilized the financial system. 2) It looks likely to break even or turn a profit. 3) It did not cause hyper inflation. For something thrown together that quickly, that’s a success, right?

Not if you listen to the right-wingers. They’ll explain that if failed and it’s somehow Obama’s fault. And they’re on to something. If you get held up at gunpoint, you should give the mugger your wallet. It doesn’t feel good. And afterward, you may wish you could have gone Mythic Ninja, melted the gun with the heat of your awesomeness and told the now bespoiled mugger to mess with somebody else. But you’re not an Epic Ninja. And if you later get your wallet back with everything in it, sans twenty bucks or so, that’s the best ending you could reasonably ask for. Thus it is with the bailouts.

sds:

What I mean here is that it’s unjust for the government to force people to save to a general fund where they will never get back what they put in. I am “saving” into the system so that the retirees have cash today; I will never see any of what I put in. The longer the scheme goes, the less benefit to all involved.

You’ll probably get back more than the money you put into the system, unless some clever conservative manages to axe the whole thing. (It’s sort of like a bank robber worrying about whether his money is secure in a bank. It could be, if you would just stop knocking off banks.) And, adjusting for inflation, you’ll almost certainly get back more dollars than you put in.

So how exactly would you abolish social security? Sure, social security is going to have some rough years going forward. We have a population bubble. But that’s not hard to solve. Do you have an alternative?  What are you going to do with the millions of elderly and disabled people who will suddenly become homeless? Even leaving beside the implementation problems, how do you plan to support the millions of elderly and disabled people who have no money?

If you would prefer to reblog the text of a lengthy post as full text rather than as a link, simply click the “as…” in “Reblog link as…” and tell it to reblog as text.

Clearly he was guilty of everything from cheating on his taxes to arson to attempted mass murder. He was also clearly not well. And while he’s not emblematic of the entire anti-government, anti-tax paranoid right-wing, he’s proof that some could be very dangerous.

But was he a terrorist?

I don’t think so. Terrorism is rule by terror. Or an attempt to rule by terror. It requires an effort to achieve political ends through fear. From the information that’s emerged so far, Joe Stack didn’t seem to have any goal other than killing himself and as many other people as possible. He didn’t have a manifesto—he just had a rambling, angry, but ultimately dull suicide note.

It would be immensely politically convenient to call Joe Stack a terrorist. But unless details emerge showing that he was hoping to accomplish somethign with his homicidal suicide, he doesn’t make the cut.

How do you get to be an apology expert? Do you earn a PhD in apologizing? Or do you just need enough testicular fortitude to print business cards calling yourself an “apology expert”? I’m jumping on this gravy train.

If you’re a news outlet looking for a phony expert for a puff piece, please consider me in the following areas:

• Awkward social interaction
• Campfires
• Cats, Pictures of
• Chairs, Sitting in
• Crossing the street
• Dogs, Silly Pictures of
• Dreams, Interpretation of
• F5 keys
• Hats, Having Strong Opinions About
• Internet Culture
• Shoelaces
• Staplers
• Thoughts and How to Think Them
• Untangling Christmas Lights
• Pillows

Eric Roberts Swagger responds to my earlier post on engagement by writing,

This is incredibly offensive, even if you only meant it to reflect the typical cultural meaning.  Not only does it assume anyone “seriously” in love would want to participate in marriage as an institution, it also celebrates and perpetuates the idea.  And that’s excluding and marginalizing.

I knew at some point one of my posts would really offend somebody—but I honestly didn’t think it would be this one. And, even upon reflection, I’m not inclined to retract any of it.

I think marriage is a great institution. Sure—we’ve been working on nailing down exactly what “marriage” means for some time now. And our past mistakes about gender relations definitely infected marriage. And we’re guilty of denying benefits and formal recognition of marriage to many people.

If you don’t want to get married, that’s your call. (Yes, I’m aware that many marriages in many states won’t be recognized by many people. I’m working to change that.) If you’re serious about spending the rest of your life with somebody, romantically, I highly recommend it.

I wrote, “It also means that your friends and relatives should not write off your fiance as a short term thing.” Eric responds:

So by extension, “dating” means your friends and relatives should write off your partner of many years on the ground that you don’t want marriage. If this doesn’t extend to other traditionally accepted signals of “seriousness” like, say, procreation and childrearing, then why doesn’t it?

That isn’t actually a logical extension. There are any number of reasons you might not want to get married. (Preserving medicaid benefits, for example.) But, generally speaking, married couples are more likely to intend to still be together in a year than unmarried couples. That’s obviously not categorically true—but “married couples” is a legitimate subset of “couples”. And, holding all else equal,  “fiance” implies a lot more commitment than “boyfriend.”

can we, finally, just allow people to be serious about their expressions of love and commitment in whatever way they fucking please, and stop policing one another’s conformity to tradition and normativity?  please??

I assure you, I’m not questioning the sincerity of anybody’s expression of love or commitment. Nor do I plan to lock anybody up for nonconformity. (I’m pretty sure I not even allowed to do that.) You’re allowed to make whatever choice you want. I’m allowed to think some choices are preferable to others.

haguenite writes,

Engagement seems like such an outdated construct. It used to be a time during which the couple could get better acquainted. They’d be allowed to have unchaperonned visits and outings, because they were set to be married anyway. But in these modern times, shouldn’t we just discard the term altogether?

In these post-modern times, the ideas that construct and define our relationships are as important as ever. And fiance is a beautiful word. Even if it weren’t useful, we should keep it.

But more importantly, engagement is an important time. It’s a time when people who have decided to spend their lives together have a chance to …. consider. An engagement can be formed by a simple yes or no. But marriage? That takes longer.

An engagement has a stated intentionality that dating doesn’t have. It’s serious. And if you’re not serious, it means you should get out while you can. It also means that your friends and relatives should not write off your fiance as a short term thing. It gives everybody a chance to speak … or forever hold their peace.

On a more positive note, it signals to the world that a couple is in a liminal state. They are full of promise—and the rest of the world can share it.