Walking marriage: till death? how about next month?

The Mosuo people of southern China have a custom called walking marriage, where a man and woman in a relationship live apart from each other and are not bound together by any formal ceremony. This relationship may last anywhere from months to years. All children born are raised by and stay with the mother. The women are the head of the household, so the most respected member of the family is the Grandma.

Here's how it works: A girl turns 18 and she is allowed to start seeing guys. When night comes, single guys walk by and knock on the house door. The girl will check him out and either accept or reject his request. My first thought was, "Sex on the first date?" Not quite. Usually it progresses like a normal relationship: talking, watching anime together, scheduling the next visit. If a man gets rejected, he is allowed to come back again. On the return visit, she would typically reward his persistence and invite him in. If he turns out to be a loser (woman's intuition) she'll kick him to the curb and the guy will not come back. No means no.

As an American, I tend to automatically impose my cultural rules on them. Their marriage setup somehow seems wrong, uncivilized perhaps. But I can't pinpoint why. I know different does not equal wrong. Maybe because you cannot take their lifestyle and implant it directly into American society. I think it needs some degree of isolation to work. Otherwise, it's going to attract swingers and gawkers. You know some guy will be lurking, waiting to take advantage of a fresh break-up. The village pimp.

Let's look at some problems that might arise. When a couple divorces in America, the child is usually raised by a parent or step parent combo. This causes more of a strain on the child and usually has long term undesirable effects. With the Mosuo, after a couple separates, the child continues to be raised by the household. So nothing really changes. What about feelings between the couple after separation? They don't feel anger or jealousy? How is the break-up so clean? Maybe there is just less at stake. It's not looked at as a failure, therefore less emotionally charged.

Unknowingly going against the mainstream, their walking marriage system has worked for hundreds of years. With increasing development in China and more tourism to the Mosuo's homeland, I wonder how long this practice will remain intact.

The future of flying

In the last century, we've seen a big change in the way we move around. Horses to cars. Boats to planes. Rickshaws to segways.

Faster! Faster! Faster!

So what's next? Most of the technology we're developing now will be usable in our lifetime, assuming YOU the reader are not 80 years old. Current government tech, like [top secret text removed], or non-government tech, like X prize sub-orbital spaceflight may be the next big transportation related industry. This has big implications for our personal and professional lives. Imagine if you could get to anyplace on the earth in under 2 hours. Businessmen off to China for an afternoon meeting. Taking care of a family member in India when they're recovering from illness. Traveling to the Dead Sea just to float around. Detroit to Chicago, that's only 3 minutes. How am I supposed to get drunk in 3 minutes? Mile high club? Better hurry up. What if the price of travel is so inexpensive, it's cheaper to fly home at the end of the night instead of getting a hotel room.

It's inevitable the technology will be there. The main bottle neck is still going to be checking in, waiting for bags. Security! My fetish of smuggling fruit into foreign countries. Perhaps we can streamline flights by prohibiting checked luggage or using retinal scanners as ID or letting robots pat you down instead of humans. I don't feel quite as bad being groped by a robot. If flight 2.0 doesn't require runways, maybe we can build vertically or integrate airports into tighter spaces like downtown areas. I think the most important thing to preserve is the miming of what to do in an emergency. Arms out to the side. Arms flapping like a bird. And please don't frighten me with the truth. Only happy thoughts.