Provocative Questions

Fandango’s Provocative Question #135

Fandango56 Comments
FPQ

Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

By now you have probably heard that the Republican legislature in Texas passed, and the Republican governor of Texas has signed into law, a measure that prohibits abortions in Texas as early as six weeks — before most women even know they are pregnant — and opens the door for almost any private citizen anywhere in the country to sue abortion providers and others who may assist a woman in any way to obtain an abortion in Texas. And this includes abortions even in cases where the pregnancy is the result of incest or rape.

Many other states that have Republican-controlled state houses and Republican governors are rushing to enact laws in those states that are based upon the Texas law.

This doesn’t surprise me. Take a look at this table below. It contains actual quotes from various Republican lawmakers regarding their feelings on rape.

I swear that these are real quotes from actual Republican lawmakers, per snopes.com.

My provocative question for you this week is this…

Regardless of how you feel about a woman’s right to get an abortion, do you believe that, in cases of incest or rape, women should be denied the ability to have legal abortions if they wish to terminate their pregnancies?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #134

Fandango27 Comments
FPQ

Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

When I was a young man, my primary sources for news were the daily newspaper, news programs on the three major commercial TV networks, and magazines such as Time and Newsweek.

But that was before the internet and before the proliferation of 24×7 cable news networks. Now I get most of my news from my iPhone’s newsfeed and from MSNBC and CNN. And, yes, I am old school enough that I’m still a reader of my local daily newspaper.

My provocative question for you this week is this…

What are your primary sources for news these days? Are you confident that your sources present the news accurately, fairly, and without bias? Or have you given up trying to keep up with the news anymore?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #133

Fandango31 Comments
FPQ

Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

On Sunday, for my Who Won the Week post, I designated “evolution” as the week’s winner because, for the first time, more than half of American adults surveyed said that they believe that modern humans developed from earlier species of animals. But at the same time, around 40% of American adults ascribe to a strictly creationist view of human origins, believing that God created them in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years.

The study suggested that education, specifically having a college degree, is one of strongest factors leading to the acceptance of evolution. It also identified religious fundamentalism as the strongest factor leading to the rejection of evolution.

So with this in mind, my provocative question this week is this…

Do you believe that modern human beings, Homo sapiens, evolved between 150,000 to 200,000 years ago from earlier species? Or do you believe that God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years? Or, if you believe something else, what is it?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #132

Fandango32 Comments
FPQ

Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

I recently read that the actor, Jake Gyllenhaal, is among a small but growing group of celebrities who say they rarely take daily showers or baths. “More and more,” Gyllenhaal says, “I find bathing to be less necessary.” He believes that daily bathing strips the body of its natural, healthy oils and changes the biome of the skin. Other actors, like Ashton Kutcher, Bradley Cooper, Cameron Diaz, Matthew McConaughey, and Brad Pitt, have apparently shunned daily bathing or using deodorant.

This piqued my curiosity, so I Googled daily hygiene and saw that some well respected dermatologists suggest that if you don’t have a personal, essential need, like getting dust, grime, or germs cleared off, daily bathing can actually be detrimental to your skin.

One article I came across noted that when you shower daily, you dry out your skin, especially if you are scrubbing with an abrasive material or soap. Further, you can deplete the essential oils, lipids, and bacteria that help your skin fight off inflammation, maintain a smooth look, and reinforce its protective barrier.

I’ve always showered daily, but after I told my wife what I read, she suggested, given the severe drought and water shortages we are experiencing in northern California, that it might be prudent for us consider cutting back to every other day, or even every third day to shower.

So with this in mind, my provocative question this week is this…

Do you regularly shower or bathe daily? If not, how often do you shower or bathe? If you do shower or bathe daily, is there anything that might persuade you to do so less often?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #131

Fandango20 Comments
FPQ

Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

I recently read some interesting statistics regarding how Americans perceive climate change. In a poll by The Economist/YouGov, 72% of Democrats believe governments can take actions to slow climate change, compared with only 24% of Republicans.

More than 80% of Democrats, half of independents, and less than a third of Republicans believe that human activity is warming the planet. Two-thirds of Republicans say massive wildfires, prolonged droughts, and severe hurricanes are events that “just happen from time to time.”

So with this in mind, my provocative question this week is this…

Do you believe that human activity is a significant contributor to climate change or do you concur with those who believe that changes to the climate naturally occur from time to time?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.