Have a strong opinion. Or don't. I don't care. Or maybe I do.

I had a strange sensation today. I didn't get two dozen e-mails regarding septic, plumbers, and interest rates. I only received about six e-mails on the house.

Ha, now that I went back and checked, I got exactly the same number of e-mails today as yesterday. Yesterday just seemed so much more dramatic. Today was calmer because I was outside the fray. The seller brought in plumber number two, and the result was an estimate so high that our place would have to appraise for $60,000 more than our asking price to exceed "the threshold". We might even talk the seller into accepting our last proposal because the whole sewer/septic part should not be a part of the equation.

I'm at home performing my usual multi-tasking. I'm doing laundry, cooking dinner, and talking about my feelings. In a few minutes I will be eating, doing laundry, and talking about my feelings.

How do I feel? I'm not sure if I had a eureka moment lately, but it felt somewhat profound. It's a tough time in history. We are on the verge of having no privacy. Extremists, and by that I mean not terrorists but people who have a strong opinion and will not budge, is at an all-time high. Small groups of people who would never know of each others' mutual interest can gather and become a community. Celebrities who used to be able to have a tiny amount of anonymity have none. The political process seems more messed up than usual. It probably has always been that way, we just have more access to the goings on.

Let's take the climate change debate as an example. It seems that you have to be on one side or the other. It's the same as the political climate. Wear a blue shirt or a red shirt and we can easily define you in 140 characters or less like a Twitter comment.

One side of the debate believes something hysterical like the world is getting much warmer and that we are the cause of it. Because we caused this, we can change this. We're quite powerful, and who doesn't want to be powerful? This belief was fringe a decade ago and seems fairly mainstream now. It's not, of course.

The other side of the debate counters by saying that we only have 160 years of weather data and the satellites in 1850 weren't quite up to today's standards. We are not powerful enough to change the planet that much. Al Gore is a big fat liar. Staying the course is the only logical course.

The debate has been set up so you have to choose sides. The "we must change now" side has been cast as liberal, and the "don't change, more of the same" side has been called conservative.

There's a theory out there, and I'm too lazy to scour the interwebs looking for it. The theory states that if you hear an argument that's close to your set of beliefs, you give more credence to it than an argument that runs counter to your beliefs. The more deeply you believe, the stronger these opinions are.

I say that the world should be more like me. Now, a few months ago I would never suggest that being Zach-like is the way to go. I don't have opinions. I just exist. What if there's a third option to taking one side or the other in an important debate? Is it possible to accept parts of each side's beliefs, or to simply state that one might need more data, or even to go the route of immersing oneself in another debate altogether, most likely sports-related?

It's really hard to not accept a label. I thought Al Gore's movie was great. Yeah, he's profiting on the climate change trend, but Dick Cheney profited from the War in Iraq too. It seems logical that if you can profit from something you believe in, that the rewards could be immense, in self-worth and in cash. I'm not going to automatically take Gore's arguments and make them my own. It's the easy way to live, but I'm through with that. I need more data. Or for my Boston audience, dat-er.

I'm not saying that it's bad to have strong opinions. That's why they are opinions. Just keep your ears open. I heard Glen Beck, please don't throw tomatoes, it was on in the gym changing room, compare the anti-climate change "cause" to Galileo's battle against the church over the earth not being the center of the universe. I immediately wanted to yell at him and anyone stupid enough to buy that horrible logic. It demonized that side of the debate. There are good points to be made, just not in that instance. I had to shut my mouth and move on.

I constantly make fun of my friends who are obsessed with Farmville on Facebook. You read that sentence and either think "those people have no lives" or "I need to fertilize my crops". There was a new group on Facebook called "I don't give a flying fuck about what you're up to on Farmville". I thought the group was clever. I did not join. I'm not a joiner. I don't feel good about myself when I feel superior to people who enjoy these games. I do kind of enjoy the superior feeling, which is probably why I feel it. There are plenty of activities that I partake in that are equally as worthy of ridicule. Come to think of it, I'd like to see a Facebook group called "I don't give a flying fuck that you won your fantasy football playoff game last week". It would be somewhat validating.

I think there's room in the world for Farmville people and non Farmville people. Can't we just get along?